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Contemporary Evolution. 




AN ESSAY 



RECENT SOCIAL C 



BY 



GEORGE MIV 




NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

549 AND 551 BROADWAY. 
1876. 






*f9 91j 



P7 



TO THE MOST HONOURABLE 



THE MARQUIS OF RIPON, K.G. 






My dear Lord Ripon, 

I am very sensible of the kindness which has so 
readily accorded me permission to dedicate to your Lordship 
this Essay on Contemporary Evolution. 

I might indeed feel diffidence in thus attempting to point 
out some unlooked-for results of those post-mediaeval social 
changes, in effecting which the English-speaking races have 
borne so prominent a part, but -for* "this encouraging per- 
mission from one whose enlarged and candid mind renders 
him a most competent however indulgent a judge of my 
endeavour. 

With much respect, 

I am, 
My dear Lord Ripon, 

Yours most sincerely, 

St. GEORGE MIVART. 

March 25th, 1876. 

WlLMSHURST, UCKFIF.LD. 







xu 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
INTRODUCTORY . i 

CHAPTER II. 
POLITICAL EVOLUTION 45 

CHAPTER III. 
THREE IDEALS 79 

CHAPTER IV. 
SCIENTIFIC EVOLUTION 131 

CHAPTER V. 
PHILOSOPHIC EVOLUTION . . . . .164 

CHAPTER VI. 
AESTHETIC EVOLUTION .218 







Contemporary Evolution. 



CHAPTER I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 



/ "T^HE inexperienced traveller who, having been wearied 
by the repeated slow ascents and drag-wheeled 
descents of a tedious coach road, afterwards surveys from 
a neighbouring mountain the route he has pursued, may 
not improbably feel surprise at the inconspicuousness of 
undulations which, while being traversed, seemed so con- 
siderable. 

The survey of the path of human social evolution from 
a stand-point as yet inaccessible to us, would no doubt 
in most cases similarly affect that estimate of the im- 
portance of his own epoch which each observer, reflecting 
on contemporary social phenomena, is apt to form. 

Nevertheless, as in spite of the relative evenness of 
the world's surface as a whole, there are here and there 
exceptional conditions — sheer precipices of both ascent 
and descent ; so history exhibits parallel phenomena which 
exceptionally demarcate comparatively uneventful areas. 

Amidst the grassy plains of North-western America, 



Contemporary Evolution. 



one region has obtained the title of " Mauvaise Terre" 
from the numerous furrows and depressions by which 
progression is again and again arrested. Farther south, 
the great Rio Colorado has by the secular attrition of its 
stream worn for itself a course here and there bounded 
by parallel precipices descending vertically some five hun- 
dred feet or more from the level plain above, and forming 
the celebrated canons of California. 

The slow, secular action of social change has resulted 
here and there, under special conditions, in the production 
of more or less sudden and abrupt manifestations, serving 
for all future time as sociological landmarks, canons on 
the plain of history. 

If a Greek who had watched the solemn procession of 
the crocus-coloured Peplos to the Parthenon on the great 
Panathenaic festival, or had laughed with Aristophanes 
at the tiresome old sophist whose moral obstetrics wearied 
his ears as his ugliness offended his Attic taste for 
beauty ; or if one of the succeeding generation who, 
having listened in the Pnyx to a philippic from the 
greatest orator who ever filled the bema y consoled himself 
for existing political troubles with Herodotus or with 
Homer, — if either of these Greeks, reflecting on his sur- 
roundings, deemed himself a witness of a social culmina- 
tion in art, the drama, oratory, history, and poetry, 
constituting his fellow-citizens the models and the teachers 
of mankind for thousands of years to come, he would 



Introdttctory. 



not have been in error, would not have over-estimated the 
significance of his epoch. 

A Roman who had just witnessed the decapitation of 
a criminal for violating the laws and defying the majesty 
of the state by refusing to burn incense to the gods and 
to invoke the genius of the emperor, might have reflected 
that the criminal was one of a class possessed by an 
" exitiabilis super stitio " and a certain " odium humani 
generis" who met together at night amidst the dead to 
sing "charms" and adore with magic rites a crucified 
malefactor represented with an ass's head, and who were 
so rapidly and mysteriously increasing that no citizen 
could feel quite sure he might not even himself be 
seized unwittingly by this degrading and insane super- 
stition, — had such a Roman, so reflecting, considered 
his era to be one critical for the empire, and himself a 
witness of the commencement of a social cataclysm, he 
would not have exaggerated the importance of the phe- 
nomena surrounding him. 

A refined Florentine, revelling in the brilliancy of a 
reviving Platonism (which was beginning to replace what 
he deemed "narrow scholasticism/' as the noble classical 
architecture was banishing the endlessly repeated details 
of the latest Gothic), and hospitably entertaining a 
Spanish Jew whom mendacious conformity had failed 
to screen from the jealous scrutiny of the Inquisition of 
1495, and who in turn regaled his host with strange 



4 Contemporary Evolution. 

details of the plants, animals, and men brought from 
the lately discovered western lands to Castile, — such a 
Florentine, if he (considering the coincidence of' the dis- 
interment of an old world with the discovery of a new) 
consoled his Israelitish guest with the assurance that they 
were the beholders of events destined to result in the 
overthrow of the existing theocratic forms, would in no 
way have overstated the consequence and meaning of the 
period in which he lived. 

That spectator who -in 1789 — when witnessing the long 
train of black-coated members of the "tiers e'tat" pre- 
ceding the plumed nobles and brilliant court on their 
way to the solemn mass of the Holy Ghost before the 
opening of the States-General — exclaimed, " There goes 
the funeral procession of the French monarchy," showed 
a remarkably correct appreciation of the fatal significance 
of the passing pageant Not, of course, but that the con- 
ditions for the coming explosion had been slowly, almost 
imperceptibly, accumulating for centuries before ; yet the 
fact of such accumulation in no way detracts from the 
truth that the end of the eighteenth century in France 
will be for ever memorable as the . epoch of the actual 
occurrence of those changes which had taken so long in 
becoming proximately potential. 

We in England (and, indeed, in Europe generally) may 
not improbably be traversing an epoch destined to be 
memorable for a long time to come, and one which 



Introductory. 



many deem to be as critical as, even if not more so than, 
either of the two periods last referred to ; and this for two 
reasons. 

First, because it may prove to be the occasion for the 
open and complete manifestation of latent tendencies 
which those two periods but imperfectly revealed. 

Secondly, because present changes are distinguished 
from all that have gone before by their intense self-con- 
sciousness. As was well remarked by Mr. Tylor in the 
Contemporary Review*: "Our social science has a new 
character and power, inasmuch as we live near a turning- 
point in the history of mankind. The unconscious evolution 
of society is giving place to its conscious development.'' 

To perceive that we are living in a critical epoch is 
one thing, to appraise that epoch and estimate its ten- 
dencies correctly is another and a much more difficult one. 
No one of course can withdraw himself completely from 
the special influence of his age and country, however 
vigorous may be his will or extensive his culture ; yet to 
estimate such phenomena correctly, and with as little bias 
as possible, is about the most important task to which a 
thinker can in these days apply his intellect. 

It is so supremely important, because we are all called 
upon to contribute to social evolution, and more or less 
distinctly to take sides, and of course only by rare ac- 



# For June, 1873, P- 7 2 - 



Contemporary Evolution, 



cident can beneficial action directly result from erroneous 
judgments. 

How easily erroneous sociological judgments may be 
formed by the most able and generally best informed men 
recent events make singularly plain to us. 

Those who are old enough to recollect the passing of 
the first Reform Bill, and have sympathetically followed 
the train of political ideas thenceforward popular, can 
hardly fail to view with amazement the more recent 
acts or manifestoes of advocates of Liberalism. Our 
comic journals were never tired of ridiculing everything 
military ; free-trade and toleration were ideals, and in 
185 1 idyllic rhapsodies celebrated the speedy end of wars 
and the apotheoses of Watt and Arkwright. 

As to religious liberty, except that feeble persecution 
might linger in the benighted peninsulas of South-western 
Europe, it was treason to doubt its maintenance and 
triumphant propagation. Lord Brougham — the eloquent 
representative of the whole school — spoke of the "evil 
spirits of tyranny and persecution which haunted the long 
night now gone down the sky," while there were few of 
his sympathisers but would have scouted the idea that 
theological conceptions could again have force to involve 
Europe in bloody struggles, or that the advocates of any 
form of Christianity would be almost tempted to de- 
fend themselves sword in hand against the oppression of 
their persecutors. 



Introductory. 



This falsification of such benevolent hopes, as also of 
the pontifical vaticinations of Auguste Comte, is a de- 
monstration that the current Liberal conception of social 
philosophy as applied to recent and contemporaneous 
phenomena was inadequate, just as the philosophy 
accepted at the period of the great French Revolution 
was proved by the event to have been superficial and 
delusory, and as the ideas which found expression in 
that most fascinating period the early Renaissance, 
gave no warning of dire events to come like the Thirty 
Years' War and the bloody and prolonged struggle of 
the League. 

Social and political events being as they are the 
ultimate outcome of the involved interaction of most 
numerous, complex, and remote causes, it is evident that 
such causes must be sought in conditions antedating by 
many centuries the events we would seek to explain. 
This truth has been perceived and acted on by all who 
of late have occupied themselves with the Philosophy of 
History, and have, like De Tocqueville, sought to trace 
out such hidden connections. No writer would any longer 
venture to explain the crisis of 1789 exclusively by the 
reigns of the fifteenth and sixteenth Louis, or that of 
1688 only by the corruption and errors of the Restor- 
ation. 

The great prominence which religious questions have 
of late assumed is, as has just been remarked, strangely 



8 Contemporary Evolution. 

in contrast with the expectations generally prevalent 
before the outbreak of 1848. Now our daily press seeks 
again and again to impress on its readers that the funda- 
mental questions and divisions amongst men are religious 
ones, while every sort of journal remarks on, deplores, 
or exults in, the widespread process of religious disin- 
tegration, and predicts or speculates about possible 
reconstructions. 

The very same character of religious excitation marks, 
however, both the French revolutionary epoch and the 
period of the Renaissance as well as that in which we 
now live ; nor would it be denied by many of our more 
philosophical thinkers, that the most striking phenomena 
of these three periods are but indications of different 
stages of one prolonged movement, though such thinkers 
would differ as to the nature and tendency of the move- 
ment itself. 

Three questions then seem to demand our attention. 

I. The first of these is, Whether in fact one spirit and 
tendency has or has not really animated these great 
movements which have marked the post-mediaeval epoch ? 

II. The second question is, If there has been one such 
inspiration, what has been its true nature and character ? 

III. The third question is, What is likely to be the 
further effect of such a spirit, and is it likely hence- 
forward to increase or to diminish ? 

Complex and difficult as the first question may appear 



Introductory. 



at the outset, it does not seem difficult to fix upon a 
leading characteristic whereby to connect together, on the 
one hand, the period of the Renaissance with that of the 
Revolution ; on the other, the latter event with contem- 
poraneous phenomena. 

That wide-spread break-up of definite religious systems, 
accompanied by a more or less marked tendency to 
democracy in politics, which exists to-day, is generally 
allowed to be the expression of a spirit similar to, if not 
identical with, that which predominantly influenced the 
great French movement of the last century. 

Similarly, the affected imitation of ancient Rome, the 
studious reproduction of classical customs, which were 
practised by so many of the " citizens " of France, as well 
as by its " senators " and " consuls/' marks a certain 
similarity of spirit between the revolutionary movement 
of the eighteenth century and the elegant and refined 
period of the Renaissance. 

Moreover, though the last-named period was not, except 
more or less in Italy, avowedly anti-Christian (like the 
French Revolution), it was, nevertheless, speedily followed 
by religious disruptions, which are deemed by many who 
heartily approve them as but the logical precursors of 
that absolute negation of Christianity which has, in fact, 
become so widespread in Switzerland, Germany, France, 
and Holland, and is now openly avowed by many of those 
who lineally represent the initiators of such disruptions. 



io Contemporary Evolution. 

One spirit then may, at least to a certain extent, be 
said to have influenced the course of events from the 
commencing disintegration of mediaeval civilisation down 
to the present day. Such, at least appears at first sight, 
to be the case. Further reflection may, or may not, con- 
firm this view, and may indicate what is the true nature of 
that spirit. 

The persistence of national characteristics, and the 
strange latent vitality of apparently extinct modes of 
thought and feeling, frequently cause surprise. 

In how many respects do not the Gauls of Caesar live 
to-day under the presidency of the gallant marshal, Duke 
of Magenta ? 

Who can fail to see in Prince Bismarck the representative 
of one of those Teutons who gained baptism through the 
sword of Charlemagne, and who in turn now seeks, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, to replace the symbol of the 
Cross by the hammer of Thor, and the last relics of a 
Christian polity by an avowed system of " blood and iron." 

In the existing Spanish civil war between the Carlist 
north and the passionately democratic south with its 
strong infusion of Moorish blood, we see (whatever may- 
be its result) a certain resemblance to that struggle be- 
tween the Mahometan hosts and those Christians who 
in the fortresses of the Pyrenees turned the tide of the 
Saracenic invasion. 

In Belgium, the conflict of the sixteenth century in a 



Introductory. 1 1 



modified form still endures, and the very name of 
" Gueux " is now assumed by those who represent the 
spirit of the original bearers of that appellation. 

We all recollect Gibbon's vivid picture of the complete 
restoration by Artaxerxes of the old religion of Persia, 
which had lingered on in spite of an apparent interruption 
dating back from the Alexandrian conquest — a note- 
worthy instance of persistence in ancient times. 

To-day, French missionaries find to their amazement 
that in spite of a persecution deemed exterminating, 
Christianity in Japan still flourishes, having been secretly 
handed down for generations without the aid of a single 
priest, and with no sacraments but baptism and matri- 
mony. 

If survival and revival may ensue under such circum- 
stances, surely a system of unknown antiquity, universal 
in extent and eminently congenial to most men as they 
actually exist, may be confidently expected to possess a 
life of extreme tenacity and to show an increasing ten- 
dency to revival as impediments and restrictions are suc- 
cessively removed. 

Such a system was that essentially pantheistic paganism 
and nature-worship which Christianity seemed for a time, 
in Europe, to have so thoroughly succeeded in supplant- 
ing. 

Even, however, at that period which has by common 
consent been accepted as representing the culmination of 



12 Contemporary Evolution. 

the mediaeval theocracy and of the purely Christian 
monarchy — the epoch, that is, of Innocent III. and of St. 
Louis — the spirit of paganism was far enough from being 
extinct, as is evidenced to us by a multitude of local 
superstitions, by such institutions as the fete des fous, 
and by the wide-spread belief in, and practice of, magic 
rites. Nay, already it showed signs of returning strength 
and activity in the poetry of Provence, the legend of 
Heloise and Abelard, and various kindred phenomena, 
constituting what has* been well termed* the " Mediaeval 
Renaissance." 

To this very day, according to some writers, the Baal 
fires of Phoenicia live in the Norwegian bonfires of St. 
John's Eve. 

The talismans against the evil eye, so common in 
Naples, are almost as expressive of paganism as the for- 
bidden emblems, sold as late as lygof in the neighbour- 
hood of the rocky mound with its old round church 
dedicated to SS. Cosmo e Damiano. 

" Even recently an oak copse at Loch Siant, in the Isle 
of Skye, was held so sacred that no person would venture 
to cut the smallest branch from it." The pilgrims at St. 
Fillan's well in 1791, "walked or were carried deasil 
{sunwise) round the well. They also threw each a white 

* By Walter H. Pater, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, in 
his " Studies in the History of the Renaissance." 
f To Sir Richard Colt Hoare. 



Introductory. 1 3 



stone on an adjacent cairn, and left behind a scrap of their 
clothing as an offering."* 

" The Carinthian peasant will fodder the wind by setting 
a dish of food in a tree before his house, and the fire by 
casting in lard and dripping, in order that gale and con- 
flagration may not hurt him. At least up to the end of the 
last century, this most direct elemental sacrifice might be 
seen in Germany at the midsummer festival in the most 
perfect form ; some of the porridge from the table was 
thrown into the fire, and some into running water, some 
was buried in the earth, and some smeared on leaves 
and put on the chimney-top for the winds. " In France, 
at Andrieux in Dauphiny, "at the solstice the villagers 
went out upon the bridge when the sun rose, and offered 
him an omelet. The custom of burning alive the finest 
calf to save a murrain-struck herd had its examples in 
Cornwall in the present century/'f 

At the vintage festival of the Madonna del Arco, 
signs of practices connected with the old Greek nature- 
worship reappear in the leaf-wreathed poles brandished by 
youths, themselves garnished with strings of filberts on 
their necks and arms — their juice-smeared faces shaded by 
wreaths of vine-leaves. 

It is not, however, to such mere external practices that 

* Quoted by Sir John Lubbock in his " Origin of Civilisation," pp. 
192 and 198. 
f See Edward B. Tylor's " Primitive Culture," vol. ii. pp. 369, 370. 



14 Contemporary Evolution. 

it is here intended mainly to direct attention, but to a 
deeper underlying spirit. Such phenomena are patent 
survivals likely to long linger amidst an unlettered pea- 
santry, the sons of the Pagani of earlier Christian times. 
The movements of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries 
sprang rather from above than below, and the anti-Chris- 
tian developments of to-day are mainly due to men of 
culture and education not generally intent upon a restora- 
tion of paganism, nor consciously imbued with its spirit. 

Nevertheless, it is here maintained that the deeply 
pantheistic and pagan spirit with which the Aryan mind 
was once saturated (which shows itself superficially in the 
modern practices just referred to) profoundly modifies 
and actuates, not the minds of the poor only, but of the 
rich and educated, who, from whatever cause, have either 
failed to master or who (in rare instances) having mas- 
tered have deliberately rejected Christian philosophy and 
theology. The result is the assumption of no merely 
negative attitude towards Christianity, but of a profound 
and violent antagonism to it springing from a keen, often 
passionate, attachment to an opposed system. 

It is happily very possible to attribute this antagonism 
in the case of many to a narrow zeal for truth partially 
apprehended. The beauty, the truth, and the goodness 
of nature when revealed to some men with a force and 
vivacity new and strange seem to them to be incompatible 
with the supernaturalism of Christianity. 



In troductory. 1 5 



The extreme narrowness and want of flexibility of many 
minds are nothing less than amazing, and the effects of 
"bias" have been lately well illustrated by Mr. Herbert 
Spencer. * 

It is then little to be wondered at that when, after 
centuries of comparative neglect, the study of nature was 
resumed with energy and passion, an accompanying 
depreciation of the Christian supernatural should have 
manifested itself, and the wonder becomes even less when 
it is recollected how such revived naturalistic tendencies 
harmonised with one of the deepest chords in the com- 
position of the Aryan race — the universal, ancient, and 
persistent worship of the powers and forces of nature. 

The chaos resulting from the break-up of the Western 
Empire being reduced to order mainly by the action of 
the Christian Church, at a period when the early germs of 
natural science had withered under the influence of the 
barbarian invasions, considerations relating to the next 
world occupied all mental activity not directly employed 
in ministering to the immediate and most pressing wants 
of this. 

The art of the Middle Ages exhibits, as it were, the 
petrified embodiment of this spirit. Not only cathedral, 
church, chapel, religious-house, and parsonage were 
adorned with religious symbols and imagery, but such 

* See " The Study of Sociology," chapters viii. to xii. 



1 6 Contemporary Evolution. 

imagery all but as exclusively decorated the cottage, the 
palace, and the market-place. The purity of Christian 
morality had accidentally resulted in the banishment of 
the nude, and the vigour and perseverance with which 
the strongest natures and the acutest intellects devoted 
themselves to philosophy bore an inverse ratio to the 
energy with which traditional physics were almost un- 
profitably cultivated. 

It is no difficult matter even now to realise the joy- 
ousness, the feeling of relief with which many minds 
must have hailed the first blossoming of that sweet 
artistic spring — the early Renaissance. Soon on each 
edifice, as if struck by a magic wand, every decorative 
detail, every niche and pinnacle blossoms out with a new 
life spreading over the architectural masses (the masses, 
as in St. Eustache, of Paris, still continuing as before), 
disguising them as some fair creeper may seem to re- 
place the proper foliage of the tree it clasps. 

To appreciate the delicacy and refinement, the full 
charm of the great movement architecturally, we must 
seek it in the land of its birth — in Italy, where the 
Certosa of Pavia, that dream of beauty, presents us with 
perhaps its most perfect expression — still essentially be- 
longing to mediaeval Christian art, yet modified by the 
movement to come, — a maiden with the blush of an ap- 
proaching revelation, Margaret for the first time essay- 
ing Faust's fatal offering of pearls. 



Introdtictory. 1 7 



This artistic revolution, the changed aspect of church 
and oratory, must have reacted on and intensified the 
very movement which that change expressed. But if a 
mere modification in the architecture of cities had a ten- 
dency to modify men's minds, how much stronger must 
have been the effect of changed views as to the archi- 
tecture of the universe (terrestrial and cosmical) induced 
by geographical, physical, and astronomical discovery ! 

The discovery of the New World has already been 
adverted to, and certainly no augmentation of knowledge 
in our own day — not even the revelations of spectrum 
analysis — can have had an effect nearly so startling. 
Yet even the shock of this geographical revelation must 
have been inferior in degree to that imparted by the 
uplifting of the solid earth from its foundations, and the 
casting of it forth from its proud physical supremacy to 
wander through space, a globe relatively insignificant, — 
effects which must have seemed to ensue in the minds 
of men when they first accepted heliocentric astronomy. 

Yet later, when the full current of physical discovery 
had set in, and the disciples of Descartes and Bacon by 
diligent investigations and happily devised experiments 
were daily adding to the accumulated store of accurate 
knowledge in biology, in chemistry, and physics, the pas- 
sionate pursuit of natural science grew by what it fed 
upon, and investigations which were begun, as alchemy 
and astrology, with utilitarian views only, were con- 



1 8 Contemporary Evolution. 

tinued from pure love of and devotion to sciences which 
repaid persevering inquirers with responses definite, trust- 
worthy, and capable of reiterated verification. 

The transition which took place at the period of the 
Renaissance was a change from a social condition in 
which considerations relating to a future world still, at 
least apparently, predominated, to one revelling and ex- 
ulting in physical nature and in this world as it offers 
itself spontaneously to our senses and our intellect. Such 
a change must* have been like that which would be 
induced by passing from within some grand mediaeval 
abbey church into a modern museum. Perhaps no man 
could, for the first time, so pass without unjustly depre- 
ciating the merits and the beauties of the one or of the 
other, so great seems at first the divergence between the 
spirits respectively embodied in those two manifestations. 

Let us enter an old English abbey — Catherine of Ar- 
ragon being still queen ! The massive pillars of its 
nave, in long drawn series, have for five hundred years 
looked down on worshippers at the daily office. The 
successive styles of different portions of the fabric speak 
of the continued zeal for the beauty of God's house in 
successive generations of its cloistered inmates. Every 
window glows with colours artistically blended, revealing 
saintly forms. The light of day struggles in with diffi- 
culty, while here and there, in deeply shaded nooks, 
twinkling lamps burn before sacred images, and the 



Inti'odtictory. 19 



shrine of the patron is brilliant with many tapers. On 
the walls may be seen the legend of his life, his temp- 
tations, martyrdom, and miracles. Above the rood, on 
the spectator's left, he sees depicted the joyful resurrec- 
tion to a better life, while on his right the torments of 
the damned within the gaping "jaws of hell" are forci- 
bly pourtrayed. As the monks give forth the Magni- 
ficat with sonorous chant, the incense rises before the 
lighted altar blazing with gold and jewels, and smell, 
in addition to sight and hearing, ministers to devotion. 
The daylight fades as, in the closing office of compline, 
the choir-boys' voices sing : " In mantes tuas, Domine, com- 
mendo spiritum inenm" and the sweet " Salve, Regina, 
Mater Misericordice " peacefully dismisses the religious to 
their dormitory and the faithful to their homes. This 
world, its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, pale before 
the mind of one who thoroughly sympathises with such 
a scene ; visions of holiness, of loving self-abnegation, of 
celestial beauty and divine love, rise up before him. Well 
may such a one, full of devout happiness, exclaim with 
heart and soul, "Domine, dilexi decorem domas tnce et 
locum habitationis glorice tucz" A mind so influenced 
may at first tend to appreciate but faintly the merely 
natural creation, and feel but scanty reverence for its 
forces, and a qualified admiration for its beauties. 

Let us now enter a modern museum. When its mul- 
titudinous contents have been so mastered that the in- 



20 Contemporary Evolution. 

tellect can grasp it as a whole, what a marvellous re- 
velation of the physical universe it offers to the intellect 
attuned to its contemplation ! 

The organic and inorganic worlds combine to present 
to the duly instructed mind a vision of majesty and har- 
mony undreamed of only two centuries ago. 

In its geological section, even the tertiary fossiliferous 
rocks speak of an antiquity compared with which the 
pyramids of Egypt are but of yesterday. Majestic 
remains of vast creatures once living but now extinct ex- 
ercise the mind in fruitful conjectures, which mentally bring 
back forms passed away for ever to live again for the won- 
der and delight of the votaries of science. The crystalline 
minerals reveal innate laws of symmetry and beauty, which, 
as it were, lend a sort of life even to inorganic nature. 

In the section devoted to the illustration of the organic 
world as it lives around us now, we may note the 
harmonious organisation (so fitted to its needs) of each 
species of animal and plant, proclaiming a nature instinct 
with intelligence as w r ell as with beauty. Here also we 
may learn how slight differences of colour or form may 
protect the individual life, and what fatal effects may 
ensue from an apparently trifling defect of structure. 
Teeming nature is seen to be the mother of myriads of 
creatures of which but few can reach maturity, and seems 
to proclaim trumpet-tongued a natural gospel of happiness 
for the healthy, the beautiful, the strong. 



Infroductory. 2 1 



The loveliest tints displayed by birds as well as their 
springtide melody, the blossom of all flowers as well as 
their sweetest perfumes, all become known to us as but 
subordinate agencies ministering to the great reproductive 
function — spontaneous tributes of organic life to Alma 
Venus. Such phenomena seem to combine with the 
evidences of the destructive and apparently cruel pro- 
cesses of nature to inculcate the brief lesson of the grim 
symbol at the Egyptian festival — " Enjoy/' 

But in our temple of nature it is not only the creatures 
of this planet which offer themselves to our scrutiny, but 
even portions of other spheres ; and meteorolites prove 
to us that similar substances and similar laws to those 
existing on this earth pervade regions of space remote 
from and inaccessible to us. 

How strongly does a nature so replete with interest, 
with wonder, with beauty, with pleasure, and with awe, 
solicit the devotion of man's faculties ! The courts of such 
a scientific temple tend to produce in not a few minds 
feelings of delight mingled with a quasi-religious senti- 
ment ; and when, instructed by such teaching, we wander 
forth amidst the living products of nature, that feeling 
becomes intensified indeed. 

Tropical scenes full of exuberant organic life are, of 
course, best calculated to call it forth ; but even in our 
own land there is ample material for evoking it. 

When from some smooth-browed, chalky down we, 



22 Contemporary Evolution. 

reposing amidst fragrant wild flowers and the hum of 
busy insect life, look down on the peaceful ocean rippling 
in sun-lit splendour at our feet, as we mark the sea-fowl 
sailing in circles with rarely flapping wing, or listen to the 
lark rising blithely through the summer air, — how strong 
with many will be the impulse towards a joyous cultus 
of an underlying soul of which such visible beauty is 
the living and palpitating garment ! The great Pan lives 
once more, nor is Aphrodite unlikely to receive a mute 
and mental homage. This world is felt to be lovely and 
sweet indeed, and visions of exclusively terrestrial joy pass 
before the mind, and tend to produce in it scanty reverence 
for the forms and but slight admiration for the beauties 
of Christian supernaturalism. 

It is in a sense which the foregoing comparison may 
serve to illustrate that the whole modern movement dating 
from the very first breath of the Renaissance may be 
regarded as being essentially a return towards paganism— 
not of course (at least in the first instance) to the worship 
of the old gods, but to much of the spirit which underlay 
that worship. 

The essence of the paganism in Europe and Aryan 
Asia with which Christianity contended, did not consist 
in any definite credo, or in any exclusive cultus, else how 
could the strange gods of the East have found a home 
in the capital of the Roman empire ? The essence of 
that paganism was, whatever may have been its remote 



Introductory. 2 



o 



origin, mainly pantheism, and consisted in a systematic 
contemplation of this world as it is, with a certain 
religiosity indeed, but without supernatural (as distin- 
guished from preternatural) aspirations or the idea of 
holiness. Its religious conceptions were drawn from phy- 
sical nature, reposed on natural phenomena, and taking 
such nature as she is, logically resulted in rites which 
answered both to her joyous and to her gloomy aspects, 
Moreover, the philosophy of the ancient pagan world was 
in this respect in harmony with its religion. 

" It was from a physical point of view of the world, and 
a desire to reduce it to a physical unity, that Greek 
philosophy took its start ; and the confusion of God with 
the world, as it was involved in its beginning, so remains 
its great error during the course of nine hundred years, 
from Thales to Plotinus. In the seventh century before 
Christ, the wise men of Greece all proceeded from the 
expressed or the tacit assumption of one world-forming 
force, whether they considered this as bound up with 
matter or as severed from it, whether they called it 
nature or the divine, or by any other name. This con- 
ception forms the common basis of the mechanical 
doctrine of nature on the one hand, and of the dynamical 
doctrine of nature on the other. All the various schools 
of materialistic pantheism, of which the Ionic is the first, 
spring from the former; all the Various schools of ideal- 
istic pantheism, of which the Eleatic is the first, spring 



24 Contemporary Evolution. 

from the latter. In the former the confusion of God 
with the world consists in making Him its material cause; 
in the latter it consists in making Him its formal cause: 
in both, the relation of all existing things to Him is that 
of the appearance to the essence, that of the part to the 
whole." * 

Before the advent of Christianity the worship of nature 
had for untold ages entered into the very marrow of the 
bones of our forefathers. The Christian Church, in spite 
of its apparent mediaeval triumph, had on the masses but 
an imperfect hold, and in some countries had but the 
acceptance of a brief tradition from fathers on whom it 
had been imposed by the sword a few centuries before. 
What wonder then if, under the influences brought to 
bear since the year 1500, Christianity is becoming disin- 
tegrated over wide areas, and the old pagan sentiment 
reappearing like some old classical poem on the surface 
of a palimpsest from which the later mediaeval super- 
scriptions are being removed ! 

As to the Renaissance, even its sympathetic historian, 
Mr. W. H. Pater, observes : " One of the strongest cha- 
racteristics of that outbreak . . . was its antinomi- 
anism, its spirit of rebellion and revolt against the moral 
and religious ideas of the age. In their search after the 
pleasures of the senses and the imagination, in their care 

* T. W. Allies, " Formation of Christendom," part iii., p. 363. 



IntrodiLctory. 2 5 



for beauty, in their worship of the body, people were 
impelled beyond the bounds of the primitive Christian 
ideal ; and their love became a strange idolatry, a strange 
rival religion. It was the return of that ancient Venus, 
not dead, but only hidden for a time in the caves of 
the Venusberg, of those old pagan gods still going to 
and fro on the earth, under all sorts of disguises,"* 

It is then here contended that the whole modern move- 
ment from the humanists of the Renaissance to the pre- 
sent day has been and is a pagan revival ; the reappear- 
ance of a passionate love for and a desire to rest in and 
thoroughly sympathise with mere nature, accompanied by 
a more or less complete and sympathetic rejection of the 
supernatural, its aspirations, its consolations, and its terrors. 

But to this position at least two objections may be 
made. First, it may be said that many sincere and 
thorough Christians have been profoundly imbued with 
a love of nature, as was especially the case with the 
seraphic father, the great St. Francis. Secondly, it may 
be objected that the modern period has been largely re- 
ligious, and that the movement of the Reformation has 
been here unjustly and unreasonably ignored. 

To the first objection it may be replied, there are two 
ways of loving and regarding nature. 

St Francis, the tenderly beloved and unspeakably 

* " Studies in the History of the Renaissance." By Walter H. 
Pater, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. 



26 Contemporary Evolution. 

revered father of so many saintly followers — he who was 
deservedly called an alter Christies — was indeed a lover 
of nature ; and, as we read in his life, the creatures of 
the forest recognised and responded to his love by 
familiar approach and ready obedience : however, he 
always loved the creature in and for the Creator ; he 
would address the insect as "brother fly," recognising in 
it an inferior created image of the same personal God 
whose chosen servant he was. The divinity he wor- 
shipped was no pantheistic soul in nature, but one who 
was his king as well as He in whom all things had their 
being. For whole days kneeling in devout contemplation, 
with tears of love he would again and again repeat with 
fond iteration the words, "Rex mens et Deus metis" as 
well as, " Deus mens et omnia." 

Such love of nature is profoundly Christian, and 
thoroughly antagonistic to that love of it for its own 
sake simply, which is as profoundly pagan. In so far as 
our modern poets and other artists partake of this Fran- 
ciscan spirit, in so far are they in harmony at once with 
nature and with Christianity. But there is little doubt 
that the prevailing tone of sentiment has long been in- 
creasingly pagan, until its most hideous features reveal 
themselves in a living English poet, by open revilings of 
Christianity, amidst loathsome and revoltingly filthy 
verses, which seem to invoke a combined worship of the 
old deities of lust and cruelty. 



Introductory. 



But even the most innocent and refined minds show, 
as might be expected, the influence of the prevailing 
spirit, and pantheism exhales from the pure lines of 
Wordsworth, as from the endless painted repetitions of 
wood and water, moor and sea, which line the walls of 
our annual exhibitions. 

As to the second supposed objection, it may be observed 
in reply to it, that in the movement of the Reformation 
two distinct currents are manifest. 

One of these flowed in harmony with that previously 
initiated by the humanists, as its effects on the Church 
were simply disintegrating. In so far as it tended more 
or less completely to the .negation of Christianity, it cer- 
tainly aided the great pagan revival, and may justly 
claim a place of distinction amidst the agents of such 
restoration. 

But the other current is that with which good people 
in this country associate the Reformation — that, namely, 
by which certain remnants of dogma were drifted together 
in definite but unstable aggregations, labelled " Luther- 
anism," " Calvinism," and what not. 

But this second current was a mere " backwater," and 
has resulted in no developments. The materials it 
stranded have remained stationary, or, as in Switzerland 
and Prussia, have utterly disintegrated, falling into and 
directly aiding to give impetus to the great stream of the 
naturalistic pagan revival. We may not unreasonably 



28 Contemporary Evolution. 

suspect that had Luther foreseen the ultimate outcome 
of his Biblical criticisms he would have shrunk back 
into his cloister and refused to aid a movement which 
had in no way his sympathy. 

A recent writer in the Times has graphically pourtrayed 
the present state of Protestantism in Germany. He tells 
us : " Young men decline to ascend the pulpit. Already 
many parsonages are empty, and more are becoming so 
every day. To illustrate this astonishing fact by a few 
figures : the eight Prussian universities in 183 1 boasted 
2203 theological students; by the winter of 1873 this 
figure has dwindled down to 740. Nor does it look 
more promising in western and. southern Germany. Of 
the two Hessian universities of Marburg and Giessen, 
the former had 124 theological students in 1831, against 
46 in 1873 ; the latter having 80 in 1850, against 10 in 
1873. Even in Wiirtemberg, the most theologically 
inclined region of Germany, the supply of young candi- 
dates for clerical honours has so steadily diminished, that 
whereas 48 were examined in 1823, only 32 were in 1873. 
But what is more significant than anything else is, that 
of the Prussian students of theology who matriculated 
in the Prussian universities between 185 1 and 1873, one 
third abandoned theology before ordination." 

Dogmatic Protestantism, as such, is essentially anti- 
scientific and profoundly anti-naturalistic, proclaiming as 
it does, the utter depravity and helplessness of our human 



Introductory. 29 



nature, and M. de Candolle* has recently shown how 
Geneva has gained its scientific eminence only since it 
threw off its orthodox Protestant character. 

It may be affirmed then that Protestantism, as Pro- 
testantism, has had no positive effect, and therefore has 
no true place in the great humanistic naturalistic revival, 
in spite of the vigorous self-reliance and generous no- 
bility of character so widely prevalent in much of the 
area it occupies. Its direct effects have been but ne- 
gative, and it has only aided that revival in so far as it 
has accelerated the process of Christian disintegration. 

We roay now turn our attention to yet another aspect 
in which the movement of the last three centuries may 
be regarded ; namely, its political effects. 

In the pagan Roman Empire, as before in Greece, the 
omnipotence of the State was a recognised as well as a 
logical doctrine. Religion, though polytheistic, was pan- 
theistic, as the philosophy was prevalently monistic. The 
individual citizen had no sacred god-given rights to main- 
tain, and the will or the welfare of the community rose 
superior to every plea which any single citizen could put 
forward. 

It was the Jews and Christians, with a religion re- 
posing on a dualistic philosophy, who, for the first time, 
to the amazement of judges who would fain have been 

* " Histoire des Savants depuis deux Siecles," par A. de Candolle : 
Geneve, 1873. 



30 Contemporary Evoltttion. 

merciful, maintained the sacred rights of conscience, and 
by patient endurance, sufferings, and death, vindicated the 
claim of each individual — not only citizen, but slave — to 
the freedom of a rational and responsible nature. 

As the mediaeval Christendom was slowly built up, not 
only did the rights of conscience, under the shelter and 
sanction of the Church, find constant recognition, but 
civil privileges and immunities were gained from rude 
feudal lords as consequences of such rights. 

The Christian Ghurch ever officially respected the 
rights of conscience, and however much such rights were 
practically disregarded in Spain or elsewhere^ never 
claimed jurisdiction over any but her own spiritual chil- 
dren ; that is, the baptized. Jews were ever protected at 
Rome, and long met with a shelter there denied them in 
almost the whole of Christendom besides. Unlike Ma- 
hometanism, the Church never sanctioned the use of the 
sword for the propagation of the faith, though asserting 
the legitimacy of its use for purposes of defence. 

Especially was the Church watchful against the asser- 
tion of religious authority or control on the part of the 
State. The religious authorities were the representatives 
of the people who believed in and accepted their minis- 
trations, and submitted to them their consciences, and 
thus our own great and glorious martyr of Canterbury, 
the pride of the English Church, died for liberty of con- 
science, for liberty in religion, of the people's chosen 



Introductory. 



guides against the would-be autocracy of a king who 
sought to lord it over the consciences as well as over the 
bodies of his subjects. 

Coincidentally with the first breath of the humanistic 
spirit, and increasing with the movement of the Renais- 
sance, appeared a revival of State claims over the indi- 
vidual consciences of subjects, and when the destructive 
portion of the Reformation movement had done its work, 
it left behind it, as a worthy monument, that monstrous 
rule of German legislation, " Ctijus regio ejus religio" 
and paganism reappeared in the political arena. 

Religious indifferentism and the rapid multiplication of 
sects in certain countries have for a time suspended the 
practical development of this worst of tyrannies ; but in 
theory the evil has augmented, and is in our own day 
beginning to bear bitter practical fruit in Germany and 
Switzerland. 

It has augmented theoretically, because the religious 
tyranny of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was 
at least avowedly based on an assertion of religious truth 
and a professed care for the souls of subjects. Now, how- 
ever, we meet with an express negation of such motives, 
and the naked assertion of the State's right, qua State, 
to dictate to its subjects their religious practices and im- 
pose on them its own doctrines — the logical outcome of 
the monistic philosophy in vogue. 

Christians have again imposed upon them the glorious 



32 Co7ttemporary Evolution. 

task of maintaining by self-denial and suffering the com- 
mon rights of all men and the most fundamental and 
sacred of all liberties — the liberty to adhere with unde- 
viating fidelity, in speech and action as well as in thought, 
to what they believe to be truth revealed to them by their 
Creator. 

The supreme and indefeasible rights of conscience 
have never perhaps been more admirably defended than 
by the most widely venerated priest of our own time 
and country, Father Newman.* He tells us : — 

" The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor ex- 
pedience, nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor 
State convenience, nor fitness, order, and the pidchram. 
Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire 
to be consistent with oneself; but it is a message from 
Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us 
behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His repre- 
sentatives. Conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ, 
a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremp- 
toriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and, 
even though the eternal priesthood throughout the 
Church should cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle 
would remain and would have sway." 

As to the necessary relation of the visible head of the 
Church to the claims of conscience, and the certainty 

* See his " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," p. 57. 



Introductory. 33 



that in him they must find a defender, he adds : " Did 
the pope speak against conscience in the true sense 
of the word, he would commit a suicidal act. He would 
be cutting the ground from under his feet. His very 
mission is to proclaim the moral law, and to protect 
and strengthen that light which enlighteneth every man 
that cometh into the world." 

On the law of conscience and its sacredness are 
founded both his authority in theory and his power 
in fact : " The championship of the moral law and of 
the conscience is his raison d'etre. The fact of his 
mission is the answer to the complaints of those who 
feel the insufficiency of the natural light ; and the insuf- 
ficiency of that light is the justification of his mission." 

That in his view as to the paramount claims of con- 
science he is but following the traditions and authorities 
of the Church he makes plain by references and quota- 
tions. After quoting the judgment, " He who acts against 
conscience loses his soul," adduced from the fourth 
Lateran council by Cardinal Gousset, he adds : " This 
dictum is brought out with singular fulness and force in 
the moral treatises of theologians. The celebrated school 
known as the Salmanticenses, or Carmelites of Salamanca, 
lays down the broad proposition, that conscience is ever 
to be obeyed, whether it tells us truly or erroneously, 
and that, whether the error is the fault of the person 
thus erring or not. They say that this opinion is cer- 



34 Contemporary Evolution. 

tain, and refer, as agreeing with them, to St. Thomas, 
St. Bonaventura, Cajetan, Vasquez, Durandus, Navarrus, 
Corduba, Layman, Escobar, and fourteen others. Two of 
them even say this opinion is de fide!' 

He also quotes Busenbaum, of the Society of Jesus, 
as saying : " A heretic, as long as he judges his sect to 
be more or equally deserving of belief, has no obligation 
to believe (in the Church) ; " and, " when men who have 
been brought up in heresy are persuaded from boyhood 
that we impugn and attack the word of God, that we 
are idolaters, pestilent deceivers, and therefore are to be 
shunned as pestilences, they cannot, while this persua- 
sion lasts, with a safe conscience hear us." 

♦Again, he cites Antonio Corduba, a Spanish Fran- 
ciscan, as stating the doctrine yet more pointedly, and 
saying : " In no manner is it lawful to act against con- 
science, even though a law, or a superior commands it." 
— De Conseient., p. 138. 

Finally, he quotes the French Dominican Natalis 
Alexander, as declaring that "if in the judgment of 
conscience, though a mistaken conscience, a man is per- 
suaded that what his superior commands is displeasing 
to God, he is bound not to obey.' , The'oL, tome ii., p. 32. 

Such a power then as the Christian Church must 
ever be the most efficient and unflinching upholder of 
the greatest and the noblest of the rights of man. 

We come now to the third question : What is likely 



Introductory. 35 



to be the further effect of this revived pagan spirit, and 
is it likely henceforward to advance or to recede ? 

It is manifest at once that no one should venture to 
apply himself to the solution of this problem without 
great diffidence and an exceptionally earnest desire and 
determination to render scrupulous justice to views which 
he does not share, and to assign full weight to forces 
and tendencies, the actions of which conflict with his own 
personal desires and inspirations. 

Certain classes of persons also are plainly disqualified 
from forming in this matter an opinion deserving any 
serious attention. 

Thus no one can estimate the action of the opposing 
forces who has not entered into and more or less sym- 
pathetically made his own the spirit which animates 
each. 

For example, no one is qualified who does not really 
understand Christianity, who does not comprehend what 
developments are really congruous with it, or accepts 
the crude and shallow views so widely prevalent on the 
subject. 

Similarly, no one is qualified who does not possess, 
not only a certain scientific culture, but also a mind cap- 
able of feeling sympathy with, and pleasure at, every ad- 
vance of physical discovery. 

Such an inquirer should have both the theological 
and the anti-theological bias reduced to a minimum de- 



36 Contemporary EvohUion. 

gree, and be capable of taking a broad view of every 
speculative question. 

Thus no one nurtured in a narrow school of theology, 
and persisting to mature life in that position, can hope to 
attain an accurate view of the position ; and the same may 
be said of any one trained in a narrow physical school, or 
who, with the naivete of Professor Huxley, thinks, appar- 
ently, to destroy Christianity from the platform of physical 
science. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer possesses qualities enabling him to 
grapple such a problem with vigour and success, and it is 
matter of deep regret that he has not thought it worth 
while to qualify himself for the congenial task by a pre- 
liminary knowledge of Christianity. It is not of course 
meant to imply that he does not possess the ordinary in- 
formation with regard to it common to all men of educa- 
tion in this country. Such information, however, is quite 
insufficient for the purpose, and surely far more than this 
might be expected from Mr. Herbert Spencer. As a fact, 
however, he gives no evidence of having acquainted him- 
self with Christian philosophy, or with the doctrines, pre- 
cepts, and counsels of the Christian Church, and yet it 
cannot be denied that that institution has occupied and 
still occupies no inconsiderable or uninfluential place 
amongst the factors of social evolution. But Mr. Spencer 
has more or less distinctly declared himself in this matter, 
and the wide acceptance which his philosophy has attained 



Introdtcctory. 3 7 



on both sides of the Atlantic renders it a matter of in- 
terest to inquire into the possible future of that philosophy, 
in connection with the future course of the great pagan 
revival. 

It is by no means improbable that such revival may 
be carried on to a far greater development than it has 
yet attained, and assume a far more distinctly religious 
aspect. 

The human mind will never rest in the mere materialism 
of Strauss, or in the inane worship of abstract humanity 
devised by Comte. 

Mr. Spencer himself well remarks* concerning religion, 
that the belief that its "object-matter can be replaced by 
another object-matter, as supposed by those who think 
the * Religion of Humanity* will be the religion of the 
future, is a belief countenanced neither by induction nor 
by deduction. However dominant may become the moral 
sentiment enlisted on behalf of humanity, it can never 
exclude the sentiment, alone properly religious, awakened 
by that which is behind humanity and behind all other 
things. . . . No such thing as a ' Religion of Hu- 
manity J can ever do more than temporarily shut out the 
thought of a Power of which humanity is but a small and 
fugitive product— which was in course of ever-changing 
manifestation before humanity was, and will continue 



"The Study of Sociology," p.' 311. 



o 



8 Contemporary Evolution. 



through other manifestations when humanity has ceased 
to be." 

In connection with workings of and self-devotion to 
merely an abstract humanity, the following words of Mr. 
Mott* may be quoted with advantage : — 

" The hope of progress, to have any powerful influence 
upon us, must be the hope of something in which we 
ourselves, or those who are really dear to us, can share ; 
not the hope that a higher race of beings will inhabit the 
earth long after we have done with it. If I heard that the 
Emperor of China was a much better and nobler being 
than myself, I do not feel that I should be much elated by 
the news. Even if I congratulated himself and his sub- 
jects, my personal feelings would be rather grim. In like 
manner, the knowledge that my ow r n lot, and the lot of 
those I love, w r as a very miserable one compared with 
what my descendants would inherit a thousand years 
hence, could not give me a very cheerful view of life in 
general. Nor is there any selfishness in this, for selfish- 
ness does not consist in highly valuing our own happiness 
— this is surely what the angels do — but in being willing 
to sacrifice the happiness of others in order to secure our 
own. 

" The hope of improving the condition of others in 
whom our affections are interested is indeed one of the 

* See " Origin of Savage Life," p. 43. 



Introductory. 39 



highest motives for exertion ; but to suppose that we 
can carry such affection forward to far distant generations 
is to misinterpret human nature. The feeling which is mis- 
taken for such transcendental love is a sentimental pro- 
duct of the imagination, which seeks to render the hope of 
individual immortality unnecessary to our happiness, by 
persuading us to forget the individual and to think only 
of the race. The feeling is false to nature, and can never 
be a real power in the world." 

But if we may expect the evolution of a non-Christian 
religiosity in harmony more or less with the wants and 
nature of man as we find him, in what direction may we 
look for such development ? The deliberate invention of 
a new religion has been experimentally demonstrated to 
be a hopeless task, and the age of myth-spinning has 
gone by in cultivated Europe and America. 

It is not impossible, however, that a new pagan cultus 
may, should its need be felt, be one day evolved in con- 
nection with the philosophy of Mr. Spencer himself. 

It is evident that such an evolution is possible, since 
Mr. Spencer is indeed essentially a Brahman, and his creed 
Brahmanism, potentially containing a whole pantheon of 
cosmical divinities, the worship of which is not incapable 
of being justified to the reason and conscience of many of 
such as really accept his philosophy. For Mr. Spencer is 
never tired of telling us that everything is some form of 
the Unknowable, while of this First Cause Itself we must 



40 Contemporary Evohition. 

predicate nothing save bare existence ; to attribute to it 
even intelligence and will would be, according to him, to 
speak derogatively of it. 

Now, in Brahmanism, " Para-Brahm " " is literally an 
unknown God. He has no qualities, no attributes, no 
activity. He is neither the object of hope, fear, love, nor 
aversion/'* 

We read in the UpanisJiad as follows : " How can any- 
one teach concerning Brahma ? He is neither the Known 
nor the Unknown. - That which cannot be expressed by 
words, but through which all expression comes, this I 
know to be Brahma. That which cannot be thought by 
the mind, but by which all thinking comes, this I know 
is Brahma. That which cannot be seen by the eye, but 
by which the eye sees, is Brahma. If thou thinkest that 
thou canst know it, then in truth thou knowest it very 
little. To whom it is unknown he knows it ; but to whom 
it is known, he knows it not. . . . One cannot attain 
to it through the word, through the mind, or through 
the eye. It is only reached by him who says, 'It is!' 
'It is!'"t 

Surely if the doctrine of metempsychosis were true, 
Mr. Spencer must be no other than the author of the 
Upanishad himself reappearing in the nineteenth century ! 

* See James Freeman Clarke's "Ten Great Religions." Triibner: 
1871, p. 84. 
f Op. cit., p. 117. 



Introductory. 41 



The passage quoted harmonises remarkably with the 
teaching of our English philosopher, who is no decrier of 
religion, but as we have seen, postulates the necessity of 
its existence, however modified its forms, as long as 
humanity endures. 

But if such views of the First Cause ever become 
generally diffused and popular in a country in which the 
instinct of worship is strong, and accompanied by a culti- 
vated taste sure to develop itself in a more or less elabo- 
rate ritual, a strange result would not be far off. 

All things, beauty, light, sound, morality, love, justice, 
etc., are modes of the Unknowable — forms of Brahma. 
The Unknowable cannot be thought, but Its modes can, 
and they are worthy of reverence, because they are Its 
modes. 

Mr. Spencer complains that the reverence Christians 
show to God is unworthy, does not properly express the 
extreme awe and reverence due to the Unknowable. 

But the Unknowable, though not an object of direct 
worship, may be — nay, should be — worshipped in and 
through Its modes. 

Thus we come to a God of beauty, a God of light, 
a God of harmony, etc., each being a form of the Un- 
knowable, and worthy of separate worship. 

But this worship should be quite unlike that which 
the Christian Church everywhere pays to its canonised 
members, since the subordination of these latter is fully 



42 Contemporary Evolution. 

recognised and their intercession alone sought. But the 
modes of the Unknowable would not be subordinate, 
would not be mere creatures to intercede, but co-equal 
and independent powers, one with that of which they 
are modes, and therefore divine. In other words, we 
have at once a restored polytheism. * 

And indeed, in the absence of revelation, what more 
worthy symbol of beneficent modes of the Unknowable 
could be selected for an object of worship than the 
sun ? Science ^teaches us that it is, in fact, not only 
the agent by which the material world around us is 
clothed in beauty and in joy, but even that by which 
alone beauty, goodness, and truth themselves are mani- 
fested to us. 

For its worship some revival of antique rites might be 
gradually engrafted on existing forms — for the principle 
of continuity must be recognised and acted on — while 

* " Absolute unity admits into its capacious bosom all gods, for 
the gods so admitted are simply parts of one universal power, which 
is the substance of all things. Pantheism and polytheism share the 
same error of giving this incommunicable Name to stocks and 
stones ; for if the being of God is the being of all things, it is as true 
to say a stone is God, as to say a stpne is a being. If God be at once 
the matter and the soul of the world, and in both, in spite of His 
eternity and unchangeableness, be subject to every change in time, 
the idolaters were not to be blamed for honouring with divine worship 
the air or the fire or irrational animals ; rather, the only blame they 
deserved was that they did not worship everything/' — Allies' " For- 
mation of Christendom/- part iii., p. 370. 



Introductory. 43 



glowing passages from the works of Professor Tyndall 
may well supply antiphons and suggest hymns for its 
ritual. 

Hereafter, then, in the worship of the First Cause, 
not as made known to us by His own act of voluntary 
self revelation, but as manifested in the material world 
alone, we may find a fuller development of that pagan 
revival, which for more than three centuries has been 
gathering life and energy. But we shall not yet have 
reached its culmination. 

To be logical, we must not ignore any side of nature, 
which is equally in every aspect a mode of the Un- 
knowable. If acts prompted by the devotion of a 
mother's love are to be reverently recognised as one 
mode of that which alone Is, not one bit less is the 
traffic of the courtesan another such mode ; and if the 
chastisement of the assassin may claim Its sanction, so 
the assassin may also equally claim it for the act on 
account of which he is chastised. 

The Christianity which yet remains diffused amongst 
us, and the refinement of modern manners, render the 
open practice of licentious and sanguinary rites as yet 
impossible, but the spirit which prompted them finds 
in this system its complete and logical justification, as 
it has found in a contemporary poet its distinct lyrical 
expression. The tendency of the movement is to ap- 
proach little by little towards this worst phase of pagan- 



44 Contemporary Evolution. 

ism, as the corruption of morals gradually increases, 
through the temporarily decreasing influence of Christi- 
anity upon the outer surface of society. 

Already we hear openly advocated the murder of the 
unborn, the sick, the suffering, and the old, as well as 
self-murder. Free love has not only its advocates, 
but its avowed votaries, and a hatred of marriage and 
the family is one of the sentiments common to those 
political enthusiasts who claim for themselves, par excel- 
lence, the title of "advanced." 

When such views come to be mastered and accepted 
by many of those who adopt the religious system here 
sketched, they will doubtless powerfully reinforce, but 
also strongly affect the religious system itself — possibly 
even its ritualistic expression. Thus the revived pagan- 
ism of the future may be calculated to startle the ration- 
alist of to-day fully as much as the revived paganism 
of to-day would have startled a reformer of the time 
of Luther. 

It remains to consider the effect on Christianity of 
the further development of the great movement we now 
witness, and to endeavour to predict the result of the 
renewed conflict between such a modified Christianity 
and a so revived paganism. 



CHAPTER II. 

POLITICAL EVOLUTION. 

T N the first chapter of this essay an endeavour was 
*- made to investigate the meaning and tendency of 
that great process of social change which has been going 
on since the thirteenth century, and which still con- 
tinues. 

This process was explained as a prolonged struggle 
between the mediaeval theocracy and a reviving pagan- 
ism,* the latter succeeding in more and more thoroughly 
rejecting the domination which at an early period the 

* In the valuable and interesting essay by the Rev. A. M. Fair- 
bairn, which appeared in the number of the Contemporary Review 
for October, 1873, views are put forward singularly harmonising with 
those above referred to. The religious belief prevailing in Europe is 
represented by him as being a synthesis of Hebraistic and Hellenistic 
elements (p. 806), and it is shown how the old, pre-Christian " Indo- 
European mode of conceiving and expressing Deity is in almost every 
respect a contrast to the Semitic. The general terms" in Indo- 
European religions " were primarily expressive of physical qualities " 
(p. 797), and " all the Indo-European religions bear the stamp of this 
primitive naturalism " (p. 799). By the pagan revival spoken of in the 
first chapter was meant an increasing action expulsive of the Hebra- 
istic elements, and the " paganism " referred to is equivalent to the 
Indo-European " naturalism" of Mr. Fairbairn, with its degraded con- 
ceptions of God, its divorce between religion and ethics, its state 
absolutism, and the slavery of the individual conscience. 



46 Contemporary Evolution. 

former had obtained. The anticipation was also expressed 
that this repudiation would be carried to a much further 
point than it has as yet reached. 

The consideration of two questions was declared to be 
a desideratum. These were — 

(1) The "effect on Christianity of the further development 
of the great movement!' 

(2) The probable "result of the renewed conflict between 
such a modified Christianity and a so revived paganism? 

It was, however/ by anticipation, observed that it was 
necessary to the successful consideration of these questions, 
that the " inquirer should have both the theological and 
the anti-theological bias reduced to a minimum degree," 
but that he should at the same time know " what develop- 
ments are really congruous with Christianity/' since 
without such knowledge it must be manifestly impossible 
for him to judge of the effects of Contemporary Evolution 
upon it 

Before' proceeding to attempt the solution of the two 
grave problems which are here to occupy us, it may be 
remarked that the question as to the truth of Christianity 
is here left entirely on one side, the obvious or admitted 
tendencies of known natural forces and laws being alone 
taken into consideration. 

Assuming that "paganism" or "Aryan naturalism " is 
playing the great part here assigned to it, and is likely 
to produce yet greater effects in the future, it is mani- 






Political Evolution. 47 

fest that Christianity must be thus profoundly modified 
or entirely destroyed, unless it contains latent powers and 
capacities calculated to meet such attacks and provide 
for such trials. If, however, Christianity does contain 
such powers in a high degree, it is evident that resurg- 
ing paganism may but be the occasion for the outward 
manifestation of such latent capacities, and that to its 
hostile action Christianity may be indebted for the most 
startling and prodigious of its triumphs. 

To investigate, then, the question whether Christianity 
is likely to be utterly destroyed, or more or less enfeebled, 
or slightly or greatly strengthened by the further develop- 
ment of the naturalistic movement, we must examine 
that movement in its (1) POLITICAL, (2) SCIENTIFIC, and 
(3) philosophic aspects. 

The questions of the effects of contemporary scientific 
and philosophic evolution on Christianity may be deferred 
to succeeding chapters. Here it is proposed to consider 
Christianity and Political Evolution only. 

Some of the political effects of the further development, 
in our own day and hereafter, of the humanistic Renais- 
sance were briefly indicated in the first chapter,* but as 
a necessary groundwork for estimating the future, it will 
be well here to begin with a somewhat fuller though brief 
survey of past and present socio-political changes. 

* Page 29. 



48 Contemporary Evohction. 

At the period of Innocent III., the Christian theocracy 
in Europe had proximately attained its greatest actual 
development. 

The social institutions and whole political fabric 
avowedly reposed upon an all but universally accepted 
divine authority, and upon a revelation the declarations 
of which were interpreted and systematically applied to 
all circumstances as they arose by spiritual authorities re- 
cognised as the revealed system's God-appointed adminis- 
trators, of whom one supreme pontiff was the acknow- 
ledged head. 

The Christian political system having thus temporarily 
organised itself and grown up into this near approach 
to a universal theocracy, began slowly to disintegrate. 

Incipiently resurging paganism first showed itself 
politically in a spirit of religious " nationalism " opposing 
itself to the cosmopolitan religious conception embodied 
in the papacy. Paganism was especially national, and 
the principle of " nationalism " in religion when once 
introduced into Christendom by legislative impediments to 
the free exercise of the Christian central and controlling 
power, rapidly developed itself and expanded fatally to 
the Christian theocracy. 

In France that " eldest son of the Church," Philip the 
Fair, dealt the first great blow to the Christian political 
system in the persons of Boniface VIII. and the Knight 
Templars. Thenceforward the anti-theocratic spirit mani- 



Political Evolution. 49 



fested itself now and again in opposition to the Church, 
and when this action was apparently reversed by the 
royal protection extended to Christianity against the re- 
volt of Luther and Calvin, it was in reality but intensified 
by a surrender of control in spiritual things as a return 
for such protection. 

The cessation of the subsequent religious troubles 
through the accession of the politic Henry IV. was the 
occasion of the yet further domination of the Church by 
the State, culminating in the despotism of Louis XIV., 
who avowed himself as not only resuming in his own 
person the whole civil power of the State, but as the 
God-giver and sacred Vicegerent of Deity, against whose 
will no right, whether of privilege, property, or conscience, 
should under any circumstances assert itself. 

The wide divergence of such a social system from the 
old mediaeval theocracy is patent enough, nevertheless 
that system continued to exhibit a considerable deference 
to older forms, and attempted to constitute a sort of 
national theocracy of its own, founded on the king's 
" divine right." 

The leprous regency and the crowned infamy which 
succeeded could not however but greatly weaken the 
force of the alleged supernatural authority of the royal 
autocracy, which authority was at the same time further 
enfeebled by the advance of the " philosophic " spirit. 

Thus, before the unhappy Louis XVI. opened the 



50 Contemporary Evolution. 

States-General, he had come to be regarded by an in- 
fluential part of the nation as merely its representative, 
and " divine right," so far as recognised at all, had passed 
to the nation as a whole. Nevertheless, the old laws 
continuing still, gave him power over the consciences of 
his subjects in the form of State control of the French 
Church. 

When the sovereignty of the French people through 
representatives — or those who asserted themselves to be 
the representatives of such representatives — succeeded to 
the royal power in the state, they not unnaturally 
assumed and exaggerated that ecclesiastical supremacy 
which had been conceded to the monarch, and the " civil 
constitution of the clergy" was the result. Thus the 
singular anomaly presented itself of one section of citizens 
claiming to dispose of the consciences of their fellow- 
citizens by imposing what was in fact a new State religion 
in the name of liberty. 

It is plain then that the diminution and destruction 
of the royal power, instead of reversing the current 
which had accompanied its augmentation, actually in- 
tensified it. 

Still, as long as any profession of religion remained, 
there was always at least a nominal and professed respect 
for liberty and conscience ; but it is interesting to note 
that the extreme of intolerance and persecution attended 
the proclaimed atheism of Hebert and the Commune. 



Political Evolution. 51 

In the rise of what afterwards became "imperialism/' 
that most cynical and unscrupulous of tyrants the first 
Napoleon availed himself of the rising tide in favour 
of freedom of conscience to legislate for the restoration 
and support of the French Church, and here some his- 
torical students might suspect that we encounter a real 
theocratic reaction. Such a suspicion, however, would 
be groundless. Not upon the old basis of "revelation," 
but on that of the common rights of different religions 
to the support of an indifferent State, was the re-establish- 
ment effected, and while the lay power thus asserted 
its supremacy and independence more than even under 
the old kings, privileges conceded to the really Christian 
monarchs were retained by the man whose treatment 
of Pius VII. proclaimed at once his paganism and his 
brutality. 

The Restoration did, indeed, more or less ally itself 
with the strong desire entertained by an influential portion 
of the nation for a reversion in the theocratic direction, 
especially under Charles X., with speedy loss of his 
throne as a result. Nevertheless, that even this monarch 
was animated by the prevailing anti-theocratic spirit is 
shown by that expulsion of the Jesuits which so shortly 
preceded his own exile. 

During the reign of the " citizen king," theocratic 
tendencies were notoriously in disfavour ; while under 
Napoleon III., and through his act, the mediaeval theo- 



52 Contemporary Evolution. 

cracy of Christendom has received its supreme blow in 
the revolutionising of Italy, with loss to the pope of his 
civil princedom as a result. 

The last hopes of those in France or elsewhere who 
sigh for the re-elevation of the tattered and disfigured 
banner of the mediaeval Christian theocracy have long 
centred in the Count de Chambord. But the head of 
that government which lately seemed so near accomplish- 
ing his elevation to the throne disclaimed in distinct and 
memorable words, in the name of his party and of the 
French clergy, any desire for mediaeval reaction, and the 
Count de Chambord himself has accepted liberty of con- 
science, freedom of worship, and the other articles of 
modern constitutionalism ; so that his accession, if it were 
even possible, could not have any other effect than that of 
lending to modern civicism the halo of his legitimacy. 

The mediaeval Christian theocracy, then, in France may 
be said to be definitively at an end, and attacks on free- 
dom and conscience are to be apprehended from the 
friends and favourers of communistic fanaticism alone. 

In England a parallel series of changes has been 
differently effected. 

Henry VIII. (that incarnation of the dominant English 
spirit of his time) completed by his despotism a process 
which had been gradually developing itself in preceding 
reigns by the formal absorption of ecclesiastical authority 
in the person of the king, made " Head of the Church." 



Political Evolution. 53 

But the theocracy in England, though thus changed as to 
its base, far from being overthrown, was for a time aug- 
mented, and it was not until after it had transformed itself 
into the despotism of the Commonwealth, that its vigour 
began slowly to relax. The very slowness was, however, 
one cause of the continuity of its ebb, for the resistance 
of the Protestant bishops to the tyranny of James II. 
(itself sustained by the theocratic sentiment) powerfully 
aided in bringing about the expulsion of one who, had 
he unhappily remained, might have effected a strongly 
reactionary transformation. 

The government of the Dutchman, with its terrible 
penal laws, was despotic enough ; but its tendencies were 
distinctly anti-theocratic, and such thenceforward has been 
the general direction of our legislation. 

Nevertheless, so conservative are we, that to this day the 
Christian theocracy remains exceptionally erect in Eng- 
land. We have, not only a national Church still in posses- 
sion of its territorial endowments, but a multitude of our 
positive enactments (such as those respecting the observ- 
ance of Sunday) repose on a more or less distinct theocratic 
basis, as also do our conspicuous state ceremonials, from 
the coronation of the chief magistrate downwards. 

There can be little doubt, however, but that these last 
relics will, more or less, gradually disappear. In spite of 
the apparent present strength of Conservatism, converging 
efforts from most opposite sides threaten that last vener- 



54 Contemporary Evolution. 

able mediseval relic irreverently termed by the late Dr. 
Wilberforce the " Squarson." 

If we turn to Spain we find there is a very interest- 
ing and instructive example of the same process under 
very different forms and with very different results. The 
prolonged Moorish wars caused Christianity to entwine 
itself so intimately with the Spanish social structure, that 
the mediaeval theocracy remained in full force to the end 
of the reign of the great Isabella. Nevertheless it was 
taking a peculiar direction, not found in other countries 
in Europe. 

As elsewhere, so also in Spain, the monarch came to 
share in that exaggerated authority and dignity which 
kings acquired, in the sixteenth century, as the patrons 
or as the vanquishers of the Church within their borders. 
But in Spain the monarch had to share his power with 
another for a time co-ordinate, independent, and invin- 
cible authority — the frightful Spanish Inquisition. 

This institution, which originally, indeed, took its rise 
in a development of the official Christian system, soon 
became so powerful, owing to local conditions, as to be 
able to defy and successfully resist that theocracy in 
which it took its rise, and the singular spectacle presented 
itself of a power professing to have for its one object the 
complete and minute enforcement of Church authority 
itself refusing to obey the supreme head of the very 
Church it professed to serve. 



Political Evolution. 55 

Overshadowing and obscuring both royal and papal 
authority, this monstrous Christian parasite offered a 
peculiar obstacle to overt manifestations of reviving 
paganism, although itself hostile to the true theocratic 
spirit. That it was not the true representative of the 
latter was shown by the unerring instinct of resurging 
paganism, which first expelled, not the inquisitors, but 
their occasional victims the Jesuits — ever in closest and 
most sympathetic union with the head of Christendom. 

Again, the anti-theocratic changes in Spain were 
mainly brought about by foreign influences. So that 
small tentative returns towards some of the old laws and 
practices were, as being national, more or less popular 
and practicable, down almost to 1868. 

The extremely radical measures which were for a time 
adopted show that the forcible repression of the anti- 
theocratic movement in Spain has in the end but in- 
tensified its action, and given rise to a spirit of antagon- 
istic fanaticism akin to, if not in excess of, that of the 
Parisian Commune. 

But few fragments of the Christian theocracy remain in 
the Madrid Government of Spain to-day, even under King 
Alfonso; but many hope or fear that a return to that theo- 
cracy may be effected under the sovereignty of " Charles 
VII." Some of those, however, who are personally ac- 
quainted with " His Most Catholic Majesty," positively 
affirm that nothing is farther from his thoughts or intentions 



56 Contemporary Evolution. 

than the re-introduction of mediaeval theocracy into Spain, 
— earnest as he is said to be in maintaining the freedom 
of the consciences of his Catholic subjects and, as therein 
necessarily involved, the freedom of the Spanish Church. 

It seems, therefore, that in all cases, the end of the medi- 
aeval theocracy in Spain has come, and it only remains to 
be seen whether the rights of conscience and the freedom 
of the individual citizen will have to be gained through 
suffering under a democratic tyranny through parliament- 
ary contests under a 'constitutional government, or, as is 
most unlikely, be allowed to grow and expand under the 
shelter of a sovereignty which might claim obedience from 
the most reactionary elements of Spanish society. 

If we pass from the mountains where the more despotic 
form of what is presumed to be Spanish monarchy is strug- 
gling to assert itself, through southern France, to the Alps, 
we come to another nation which may seem to constitute 
the very political antipodes of Spanish monarchism, name- 
ly, Switzerland. 

Yet in Switzerland we find a singular fundamental 
resemblance to Spain under a strangely different exterior. 

The United States and Switzerland are republics, Spain 
and England monarchies. Thus are they classed in 
popular apprehension. Really, however (as most of my 
readers are doubtless aware), it is Switzerland and Old 
Spain, the United States and England, which ought to 
be classed together. 



Political Evolittion. 57 

When, after the religious disruption of the sixteenth 
century, the Swiss Confederation settled down into a 
certain number of Catholic and a certain number of 
Protestant communities, an intimate union of Church and 
State became the rule in the respective cantons. The 
rigid theocracy of Geneva is well known to all, but in 
the Catholic as in the Protestant cantons, Church laws 
were enforced by secular authority, and thus much of 
mediaeval theocracy has been preserved down to the 
present day by these small communities. 

Now, however, repudiation of the Christian theocracy 
is making its way in Switzerland, but by a singular in- 
version it is the non-Christian part of the nation which 
is seeking to prolong its forms, while those who are par 
excellence the very representatives of that theocracy are 
being' gradually driven to take up a position hostile to 
them. This inversion has arisen through changes by 
which, owing to the union of Church and State, power 
over the Church has come into the hands of those most 
hostile to her, and we have as a result the grotesque 
exhibition of ex-priests, who have violated ail their own 
vows in the name of liberty of conscience, becoming the 
willing agents of an anti-Christian government in robbing 
and oppressing Christians amongst whom that govern 
ment has enabled them to intrude. 

In Berne we also find an anti-Christian government 
taking upon itself to decide what doctrines its fellow- 



58 Contemporary Evolution. 

citizens are to accept, to whose guidance they are to 
commit their consciences, and also to draw geographical 
boundary lines, on one or the other side of which citizens 
are or are not to be allowed to make use of each other's 
religious ministrations. 

There can be little doubt but that this tyranny will in 
time so arouse consciences in opposition to it, that a separ- 
ation between Church and State will have to be ultimately 
effected, and thus in Switzerland, as in France, England, 
and Spain, the Christian theocracy, on its old basis, will 
have ceased to exist. 

Descending the Alps and Apennines to Brindisi, we 
traverse a country now undergoing changes peculiarly 
interesting in reference to our present inquiry, since there 
the Christian theocracy has its headquarters. 

It may at first be thought singular that Italy, which 
was the fons et origo of the modern humanistic spirit, and 
which in physical science (as especially in anatomy and 
geology) was so far ahead of more northern nations, should 
have continued, from Turin to Naples, subject to a system 
of government which appeared so decidedly theocratic. 

But, in fact, it was much less so than it seemed. Thus 
in Tuscany the revolution of 1869 caused a dukedom 
to disappear which nominally, indeed, supported Christ- 
ianity, but which did so much more in the interest of 
•the dukedom than of the Church. The profoundly anti- 
theocratic Leopoldine laws were in full force, and now 



Political Evolution. 59 

under Victor Emmanuel if there is no longer that State 
support for the Church which formerly existed, the im- 
pediments to its action have also disappeared. 

To the popular mind of England the penultimate King 
of Naples was the very representative of priest-ridden 
monarchy. Really, however, though glad to make use 
of Church influence for the support of the throne, not 
many Catholic monarchs have been more anti-theocratic 
than the sovereign in question. Not only intolerant of 
the Jesuits, he would not even listen to Pope Pius, when 
as his guest at Gaeta he petitioned for a modicum of 
freedom for the Sicilian Church. 

The destruction, then, of such systems of government 
in Italy was more the making apparent of what was before 
latent than any really considerable advance in the anti- 
theocratic direction. The advance had been made long 
before. 

While the pope's civil princedom remained, and any 
community, even that of a single city, continued subject 
to his direct civil sway, the mediaeval Christian theocracy 
might be said still to exist. With its disappearance, 
should it be final, disappears the logical basis of that 
system ; then " Christendom " exists and can exist no 
longer, however some shreds and patches of it may for a 
time linger amidst the social phenomena of the succeed- 
ing period. 

It is true that we see a curious and interesting example 



6o Contemporary Evolution. 

of " survival " in the Russian Empire. There a very- 
peculiar Christian theocracy still remains erect ; perhaps 
in full force, and destined to further development. Signs, 
however, are not wanting that it is really a tottering 
structure, deeply undermined and honeycombed as it is 
by the efforts of religious dissidents. Nevertheless the 
future of Russia is a subject full of uncertainty, and a 
problem not less perplexing than abounding in interest, 
about which a word or two may be said later. 

We now come to* the last region which need occupy 
us in our brief survey of the leading features of the 
action of social political evolution on Christianity from 
the Middle Ages to the present day. This last region is 
Germany. Under existing circumstances it is the most 
interesting of all ; for there before our eyes is being 
played out on a magnificent scale a remarkably involved 
struggle, in which mediaeval and modern, Christian and 
pagan conceptions are entangling and disentangling them- 
selves with singular complexity, and forming a labyrinth, 
the clue to which seems to have been strangely missed 
by most of the leaders of English public opinion. 

Under the head of Germany must be included, not 
only the new German Empire under Prussia, but Austria 
also. Austria must be included on account of the im- 
portant part played by Southern Germany in the national 
evolution from the thirteenth century to the present day. 

In Germany the Christian theocracy attained in one 



Political Evolution. 61 

respect a development which it reached nowhere else ; 
namely, in the number of its spiritual rulers who held 
direct civil sway, — the various prince-bishops and arch- 
bishops, such as those of Cologne, Mayence, Salzburg, 
etc., etc. Besides this, the kaisers had a certain sanctity 
of authority recognised by the ecclesiastical power beyond 
that of any other temporal ruler. According to the 
generally received opinion of the Middle Ages there was 
but one supreme temporal lord of Christendom — the 
emperor, as there was but one supreme spiritual lord 
— the pope ; and it w r as in this widely diffused belief 
that the emperors in their struggles with the pontiffs 
found, perhaps, their main support. 

With the weakening of the Christian theocracy waned 
also the power of the Holy Roman emperor, the inde- 
pendence of subordinate princes in Germany increasing, 
while elsewhere the central powers were strengthening 
themselves at the expense of the various subordinate 
local authorities. 

The movement of the Reformation, the subsequent 
religious struggles, and the rise of Prussia, completed, as 
every one knows, the real destruction of the old system. 
Thus, when the Corsican despot finally put an end to 
that venerable imperial dignity, he really caused to dis- 
appear but the shadow of a shade. He little thought, 
however, of the Nemesis he was conjuring up, and how 
the chronic disease of Germany would be cured and its 



62 Contemporary Evolution. 

feebleness invigorated by the sharp cautery of his mer- 
ciless invasions. 

The old historic Christian German sovereignty, with 
its majestic hierarchical system, in the State as well as 
in the Church, in the early part of the Middle Ages, as 
powerful as it was magnificent, was indeed at an end ; but 
with marvellous rapidity arose that strong instinct and 
sentiment of unity, of which we see the result to-day — 
a unity not based on Christianity (and now, indeed, in 
deadly contest wi£h it), but reposing on race and nature 
only, and in perfect harmony with that reviving paganism 
which in the first chapter of this essay it was endea- 
voured to describe. Of this latent power Napoleon I.'s 
aggression elicited the manifestation, but the full force 
of it was reserved for the overthrow of Napoleon III. 
The course of evolution in Germany, then, has been 
substantially similar to that we have seen elsewhere out 
of Prussia, though so complex, that an exposition of the 
causes of local differences in its development would alone 
form a work of the highest interest. After the final 
religious effect of the Reformatory movement had sub- 
sided, the old imperial authority was, strange to say, 
amongst the first to evolve and develop the further 
growth of that spirit which was most fatal to its own 
foundation. The profoundly anti-Christian policy of 
Joseph II. anticipated that of the French revolution 
and of the pagan German government of to-day. 



Political Evolution. 63 

The spectre of sans-culottism at Paris frightened back 
the European sovereigns into a temporary reversal of 
previous action, and made them seek to revitalise the 
rapidly decaying mediaeval theocracy in the selfish 
interest of their own power. The experiment has been 
short-lived ; Austria has thoroughly changed her policy, 
and Christianity, whatever its future may be, seems 
likely to suffer but little from the incubus of so damag- 
ing a support. The equally selfish and essentially hypo- 
critical system of Prussia has also ended, and given place 
to an antagonism capable of putting the vitality of 
German Christianity to the proof. Even then, by these 
two powers —Austria and Prussia, —which in different 
aspects may claim to be the nearest existing represen- 
tatives of the old temporal head of Christendom, the 
Christian theocracy is finally disavowed. The northern 
kaiser has been ostentatiously welcomed in the old im- 
perial city as the avowed author of a letter to the su- 
preme head of that theocracy, in which the claims of 
that head are repudiated and his authority defied. 

It is true that the southern emperor is the crowned 
king of Hungary, and that his present conduct seems 
only to have been forced on him by circumstances, after 
years of fruitless efforts to found his empire on some 
modification of the old theocratic basis, much of which, 
indeed, still remains within the bounds of his empire. 
His failure is but a still greater proof of the irresis- 



64 Contemporary Evolution. 

tible force of the adverse current he has in vain tried to 
stem. 

It is true, again, the northern emperor is the crowned 
king of Prussia ; he has repeatedly protested that his 
power has a divine sanction, and he has been ever per- 
sonally opposed to the anti-Christian policy in which he 
is now engaged. His crown, however (like that of Na- 
poleon I.), was placed upon his head by his own hand 
— an act in itself virtually amounting to repudiation of 
a Christian theocratic basis, while the actions of his 
government have rapidly become more and more pro- 
foundly anti-Christian. 

To sum up, then, the results of our survey : it may be 
asserted that since the days of St. Louis one movement 
has in the main continued almost uninterruptedly, in 
spite of actions of an apparently conflicting tendency. 

This process has been one of continuous disintegra- 
tion of the mediaeval Christian theocracy, proceeding with 
varying degrees of rapidity over the whole area of what 
was once Christendom. 

This movement, since it first displayed itself, has been 
aided and accelerated, not only by processes manifestly 
in harmony with it, but also by others which were in- 
tended and seemed calculated to arrest, or even reverse 
it. 

The whole current of events became turned in one 
direction, and whether here or there princely power was 



Political Evolution. 



augmented or diminished, whether popular liberties were 
curtailed or increased, whether aristocracies arose or de- 
cayed, all has aided in diverse ways this, which seems 
to have been the great dominant movement from medi- 
aeval times to our own. 

Every effort which has been made to stem the current 
has failed ; every power which raised itself in opposition 
has been broken. 

In vain the Pilgrimage of Grace, with its banner of the 
five holy wounds, strove in fair fight to maintain the 
established system ; in vain the misguided efforts of the 
Powder Plot sought by nefarious measures to restore it ; 
in vain the virtues and conscientious efforts of Mary of 
England tried to retain the English crown to the Church ; 
in vain the winning graces of Mary of Scotland sought 
similarly to retain the Scotch. Priests bled at Tyburn, 
English and Irish citizens suffered confiscation, exile, 
and death, in fruitless efforts to reverse or to impede the 
anti-theocratic course of events. The very atmosphere 
which repelled the Armada favoured the Dutch invasion, 
and blood flowed unavailingly at Culloden and the 
Boyne. The efforts of the French league were as 
resultless (in their intended direction) as the infamous 
dragonnades of Louis XIV., or the heroism of La Vendee. 
The white cockade of the Restoration but intensified 
the anti-theocratic hatred of France ; and the apparently 
strong bands imposed by the Holy Alliance and Treaty of 



66 Contemporary Evohttion. 

Vienna proved really but cobwebs to the expansive 
efforts of advancing paganism, while the last Napoleon, 
powerful in invoking it in Italy and Austria, proved 
utterly impotent in his efforts to exorcise the spirit he 
had raised. The loyal troops of Francis Joseph, though 
momentarily all but triumphing against both France and 
Prussia, nevertheless actually failed against both, and the 
success of Germany in the recent war, instead of con- 
firming and extending over the whole empire that modi- 
fied theocracy which existed so peacefully and prosper- 
ously in Prussia, has had a directly opposite result. 

It would seem that an action so wide-spread, so con- 
tinuous, and so deep, proceeding as it is with accelerated 
rapidity, cannot easily be arrested, but rather must con- 
tinue to proceed much further. 

Nevertheless, there are many who believe that a re- 
versal will at length ensue, and some modification of the 
old theocracy be again generally established. At pre- 
sent the only power which seems to contain enough of 
the old material is Russia. It may be that, instead of 
politically assimilating itself to western Europe (like the 
manners of its highest class), it may come to exercise a 
powerfully reactionary tendency. It does not seem im- 
possible that, availing itself of the mutually enfeebling 
wars and revolutionary disintegrations of western powers, 
it may hereafter come to play that part in Europe which 
was played of old by Macedon in Greece. 



Political Evolution. 67 

Such a western expansion might be greatly aided if, 
carrying out the idea of a former sovereign, it united it- 
self to the Roman Church, and made itself the agent of 
the most powerful religious feelings and of all the theo- 
cratic reactionary tendencies latent in western Europe. 
It does not even seem impossible that a Roman pontiff 
effectively restored to his civil princedom by such Rus- 
sian agency might inaugurate, by a papal consecration 
in the eternal city, yet a fresh dynasty of " Holy Roman 
emperors," a Sclavonic series succeeding to the suppressed 
German line, as the Germans succeeded in the person of 
Charlemagne to the first line of Csesars. 

Nevertheless, such a transformation would be so great 
a reversal of the course which history has now pursued 
for six hundred years, that it can only be regarded as a 
remotely possible solution of the problem offered to us 
by the peculiar social and political divergence of Russia 
from the rest of Europe. 

Again : if the expectation of continued social evolution 
in the path now so long followed be disappointed, and if 
Christian theocracy, but slightly modified from what has 
before existed, be restored, Christianity can of course have 
nothing to fear from such a change from subordination 
to supremacy. We may here, therefore, neglect all possi- 
bilities of reaction in a theocratic direction, since the 
subject of our inquiry concerns the probable result of the 
continued progress of resurging paganism, on the hy- 



68 Contemporary Evolution. 

pothesis that it continues to follow the same course as 
heretofore. 

It is difficult to believe but that further progress in the 
course hitherto pursued can mean anything else than the 
entire cessation of political support to Christianity, whether 
in schools, the legislature, the head of the State, or the 
formalities officially recognised as concerning the birth, 
sexual relations, or death of citizens. Each man will 
then be .everywhere free without political penalties of any 
kind to live, marry, carry on all social relations, die, and 
be buried in open rejection of the Church and her agency 
if he be so minded ; and no State recognition or favour 
will tend to bribe individuals to simulate the acceptance 
of a creed which in their hearts they reject. 

What, then, must be the effect on the Christian Church 
of such a universal repudiation of the Christian theocracy? 
Clearly, if that Church be essentially bound up with 
society as it has existed since mediaeval times, such re- 
pudiation must be simply fatal. 

It is not wonderful that so very many Christians view 
with alarm and dismay the progress of this great pagan 
movement. In the first place the Christian Church has 
intimately connected itself with the Christian State : in 
the liturgy of royal coronations ; in the past sanction 
of and sympathy with aristocratic institutions ; in the 
tradition to the secular arm ; in the Christian origin of 
so many universities; in the congregations devoted to 



Political Evolution. 69 

instruction, to the sick, the aged, and the poor, through 
the accepted intervention of the State ; in the general 
tendency of the altar to ally itself to the throne, as in the 
France of to-day, in Spain, and in Austria. 

Secondly, the enemies of the theocracy are the avowed 
enemies of Christianity itself, as in Spain, as with the 
French red republicans, as in Austria and Germany, and 
as with the most free-spoken democrats here in England. 

Thirdly, in the past the destruction of the theocracy 
has undeniably been often the precursor of the destruction 
of religion itself, by the expulsion of citizens who have 
taken religious vows, the sequestration of their property, 
the restraint of their persons, occasionally by their actual 
slaughter. 

Fourthly, vast religious changes have so often been due 
to political passion, as in England and Germany in the 
sixteenth century, and in Germany now ; while sometimes 
national prejudice, as in Prussia and the United States 
in the present day, acts powerfully to render minds 
hostile to particular creeds. These considerations may 
well cause Christians to dread the further advance of 
modern political change. But the question then arises, 
Is there any compensating and restorative action which, 
not being obvious, escapes the notice of these alarmists ? 

It may be that the existing social fabric is but one of 
several or of many political modes, with each of which 
Christianity can co-exist, and that the disintegrating 



jo Contemporary Evolution. 

changes are harmless to it, since they will but occasion 
the evolution of a new power. 

If we regard the Church as a complex organism, it 
must, like every other organism, live by a series of actions 
responsive to the effects produced on it by the environ- 
ment. 

The action of the environment may be either to dis- 
integrate and destroy, or to consolidate and perfect it, 
and such action will destroy the Church if it is not able 
to effect internal modifications adequately responding to 
external changes. 

It is manifest that a great process of external disinte- 
gration has taken place as regards the Church's social 
relations — a process crippling its power of action on its 
old basis. The question then is, Has this action been or 
not been accompanied by a process of internal integration 
which has more and more perfected and strengthened the 
Church's power of action on a new basis, and fitted it 
better than ever before for the struggles of the future ? 

To ascertain the probable efficacy of such integrating 
action, if it exists, we must first endeavour to find out what 
is the social system likely to replace that which seems 
to be passing away, and must pass away if the existing 
anti-theocratic movement continues to augment and de- 
velop itself. We must thus inquire, in order to see whether 
the integrations arising in the Christian Church are or 
are not calculated so to meet the effects of the disintegra- 



Political Evolution. 71 

tions as to place the ecclesiastical organism of the future 
in harmony with its new environment. Every social 
fabric, every considerable aggregation of mankind, must 
since men are rational animals, repose upon some reason- 
able principles resolvable ultimately into one of two 
ideas, " expediency " or "right," or into some combination 
of them. 

A community of savages may perhaps continue to 
exist on the simple principle that infringement of the 
accepted tribal customs is equivalent to a broken head 
or a spear in the thigh. But this is a form of expediency. 
More highly organized social states may be conceived, 
under certain circumstances, to indefinitely cohere from 
force of habit and a perception of utility essentially like 
the preceding. On the other hand, such a persistent 
condition may be largely indebted for its persistence 
to a respect for ancient custom which, if explicitly or 
implicitly enjoined on citizens, becomes essentially the 
acceptance of some such moral aphorism as, " It is proper 
to maintain ancient customs ; " and " This is a form of 
right." 

As soon, however, as civilization has in any community 
attained a considerable development, the question of the 
basis of the social fabric will be sure to address itself 
to an increasing number of its component units. 

A highly complex social system like that of England 
to-day reposes partly on perceptions of utility, but far 



Contemporary Evolution. 



j - 



more on moral ideas of two kinds — one being that of a 
divine appointment, the other that of absolute right. 

The idea of utility or expediency may frequently be 
much more prominent and obtrusive, both in explanation 
and precept, than the moral conceptions. But it would 
nevertheless be difficult to deny that a belief in "divine 
appointment " widely prevails, at least in our agricultural 
districts, and that the conception of " absolute right " is 
a considerable, if not a main agent, in the diffusion of 
democratic ideas among our artisans. 

Though it is manifest that our social system is largely 
maintained through a belief that things " work well," 
yet much that is put down to " expediency " will, when 
fully analysed, be found really to repose on a "moral" 
basis. Thus, Mr. Mill's so-called " Utilitarianism," aiming, 
as it professes to do, at the greatest happiness of all 
sentient beings, is really a distorted and exaggerated form 
of " absolute morality." 

It seems indeed, to say the least, very doubtful whether 
any social fabric could enduringly repose upon simple 
and naked expediency and real utilitarianism ; that is, 
that the temporal welfare of the individual should be to 
him his only end, and that he should recognise no obli- 
gation on any citizen or section of a community to regard 
the welfare or desires of others in the smallest degree 
beyond what self-interest may dictate. The moment any 
one asserts that a citizen ought to restrain his actions 



Political Evolution. 73 

within such bounds that they do not impede the purely 
self-regarding actions of his fellows, he steps beyond 
utilitarianism into the region of " absolute morality." All 
he can consistently urge is that it is expedient for each 
man to seek io establish and maintain a social system 
in which all actions are free to every citizen which do 
not directly infringe the similar freedom of his fellows. 
This may be asserted to be expedient, since thus alone 
can each man best secure the steady and least impeded 
exercise of his own volition. 

But whether or not a social fabric could be maintained 
in which it could not be proclaimed that to disregard 
others is wrong, as well as inexpedient, certain is it that 
if maintained it might become the most fearful of tyran- 
nies. In such a social system the extermination of a 
harmless minority could only be opposed on the ground 
that it might be prejudicial to the majority. 

Turning then to the other idea, that of " Right," it 
is manifest that it may repose upon either of two bases. 

(1) A supernatural revelation, if a belief in that reve- 
lation be all but universal in any given society. 

(2) A common belief as to natural absolute right, if any 
sufficient ethical proposition can be found which will 
command the assent of the overwhelming majority. 

Social systems based on an asserted divine revelation — 
i.e., theocracies — have played a most important part in 
social evolution up to this day ; and no theocracy has 



74 Contemporary Evolution. 

played so great a one as that, the disintegration of which 
we are engaged in considering. 

It is evident that naked self-assertion is a relatively- 
feeble base for a national theocracy, and that some 
objective testimony is requisite to sustain, for any pro- 
longed period, the claim of any man or body of men to 
supernatural authority. 

This testimony did exist in mediaeval Christendom. 
The government of each nation could appeal to a vene- 
rated external witness, namely, to the Church, as existing 
in other nations, and to the supreme head of that Church, 
whose decisions were accepted as final. No such testi- 
mony exists for any of the competing systems which claim 
a divine authority to-day — such as that of the Russian 
czar or of the Prussian monarchy, as understood by its 
king. It is also difficult to conceive that any similar 
testimony can come to be made use of by any non- 
Christian theocracy hereafter to arise. 

It would thus seem that the social systems of the future 
must come to repose merely upon natural and intuitive 
right, unless mankind should revert to some form of 
Christian theocracy. 

But what basis of natural right can be devised which 
the different races will agree to regard as of unquestionable 
solidity ? 

Those who agree in affirming that man's intellect has 
a power of apprehending " right " and "wrong" as dis- 



Political Evolution. 75 

tinct from ? pleasurable " and " painful," may for all that 
differ widely as to what are and what are not the dic- 
tates of conscience in matters of even little complication. 
Nevertheless, however great may be such divergence, 
there is one dictum which they will generally recognise as 
indisputable ; viz., that no citizen has the right to deny to 
another a liberty which he, as a citizen, claims for himself. 

This is the converse of that principle which we have 
seen may be based upon a utilitarian foundation, and it 
is essentially the same as the fundamental principle of 
social ethics enunciated by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his 
" Social Statics " — the right of each man to do all save 
that which limits the similar rights of others. 

If Mr. Herbert Spencer had no other merit, deep grati- 
tude and great honour would be due to him for having 
with such vigour and efficiency vindicated this fund- 
amental principle of natural sociology. 

The utilitarian maxim, when impregnated with the 
moral aphorism, becomes a sure ground whereon the 
rights of minorities and of the individual may repose. 
Without that aphorism, however, they have no security. 
The absolute distinction between the " right " and the 
" pleasurable " being denied, inconvenient minorities cease 
to have any shelter from the absolute dominion of the 
majority — a frightful doctrine long latent and now become 
apparent in modern " Liberalism." 

Such sentiments are, strange to say, the logical out- 



7 '6 Contemporary Evolution. 



come of that philosophical system favoured by the London 
University and so popular in this eminently free country 
— a system which denies all absolute truth and all dis- 
tinctions of kind between " right " and " pleasure." 

Such a system — the monistic philosophy — recognising 
no distinction of kind between God and nature, the 
natural and the supernatural, man and brute, the good 
and the pleasant, naturally and logically asserts the 
absolute right of the state to control all and everything 
in the life of every individual citizen, and necessarily 
denies all rights to individuals or minorities. In principle 
it warrants the performance of acts incomparably more 
atrocious than the massacre of St. Bartholomew or the 
burnings of the Spanish Inquisition. 

The perpetrators of those crimes, however bloody their 
acts, never put forth a theory which denied all rights to 
their victims. But there is no principle on the view advo- 
cated by Professor Huxley's school to which a minority 
might appeal in bar of utter extermination by a majority, 
if unable to convince the majority that it would injure 
itself by that minority's destruction. 

Such is the natural political development of the monistic 
philosophy. It was so in the old pagan days, and it is 
tending to reappear with the revival of paganism as was 
before asserted* in the first chapter of this essay. 

* See p. 29. 



PSitical Evolution. 77 

But if a freer social system results merely from the 
addition of the idea of " absolute morality " to that of 
"expediency/* all those who go yet farther and assert 
the existence of a personal God, whose essence is abso- 
lutely moral, have a yet securer and wider basis for 
freedom. All such must also assert that each man has 
a right freely to perform all such actions as God through 
his conscience has enjoined him to perform, provided they 
do not deprive other men of similar freedom to fulfil 
what they believe to be their duty. 

Thus the greatest amount of personal freedom comes 
to rest on a basis of " divine right," since, in the absence 
or non-recognition of a divine revelation limiting its 
exercise, such personal freedom becomes God-given and 
absolute. 

Similarly all who hold such belief must assert that all 
the citizens of a state combined together save one, are 
morally incompetent by their joint authority as citizens to 
compel that one to perform an act against his conscience 
such as would be an outward act of adoration to a Deity 
in whom he disbelieved, or of insult to Him whom he 
conceives to be his Creator and his Lord. 

Similarly they must allow that if two citizens agree in 
believing that one of them has a God-given jurisdiction 
over the other, the one must be free to yield voluntary 
obedience to the other in all that does not affect the equal 
rights of other citizens. 



78 Contemporary EvoMttio7i. 



They must also admit that those citizens who agree in 
holding similar views as to their relations to God must be 
free to exert such combined actions as do not interfere 
with the analogous rights of combination of other citizens. 

Again, they cannot logically deny to citizens freedom 
to declare their belief to those who ask them, and 
especially to teach their children themselves or to select 
other citizens to whom they may choose to delegate that 
office. 



CHAPTER III. 

THREE IDEALS. 

/ ~T^HERE are thus, as we have seen, now struggling 
-*- for supremacy THREE DISTINCT IDEALS, three dis- 
tinct socio-political systems, and two are mixed up and 
blended in the great movement which has been described 
as reviving paganism. 

That great modern movement has been and is so power- 
ful because it is invigorated by the temporary union of 
these two essentially divergent and conflicting tendencies 
of ideals. 

(i.) The first of these is the mainly unconscious and 
partly conscious real pagan revival and revolt against 
God, — PAGANISM. 

(2.) The other is the spirit of freedom, the assertion of 
natural right, and revolt against the domination of man 
(merely as man) over his fellow, — CIVICISM. 

Besides these there is also that with which the pagan 
revival has conflicted and conflicts, namely : — 

(3.) The tendency to preserve, or more or less bring 
back, the mediaeval Christian theocracy, — MEDIEVALISM. 

These three tendencies are actually mixed up in the 
most complex manner in modern, social, and political 
struggles, as we shall shortly see. 



80 Contemporary Evolution. 

The efforts of those who strive for the third ideal need 
not here occupy us, since our subject is the action upon 
Christianity of the modern movement — on the supposi- 
tion that it continues. 

The first tendency, that towards true conscious pagan- 
ism, may indeed, as was said in the first part of this 
essay, present us with some startling developments in 
the future. 

Nevertheless, when once completely dissociated from 
the spirit of civicism, its force must greatly diminish, and 
if the re-appearance of a Spanish grand inquisitor in the 
flesh is about as likely as that of a plesiosaurus, a general 
enduring return to the old paganism must be still more 
unlikely, though the spread of pantheism at the present 
time is portentous. 

There is then reason to believe that the second ten- 
dency and ideal, that of freedom reposing both upon ex- 
pediency and absolute God-given right is the consumma- 
tion towards which society is, on the whole and in general, 
tending, widely divergent as may be really or apparently 
its direction here and there. 

In England, its colonies, this tendency is now trium- 
phant. The same may still be said of the United States, 
though greed of power on the part of an unscrupulous 
president now threatens to stir up religious strife by a 
wanton invasion of religious equality. Few sights could 
be more grievous and depressing than would be that 



Three Ideals. Si 



of a great nation led into a reactionary policy of re- 
ligious oppression in the miserable interest of a " third 
term," or even the spectacle of a large number of citizens 
of a really free country persuaded to barter liberty and 
conscience for the indulgence of sectarian animosity by 
legislation directly counter to the whole process of social 
evolution, as displayed in the history of the last six 
centuries. Such a course of conduct would be the more 
deplorable, seeing that the United States have reaped 
the advantage of that evolutionary process without having 
had to uproot or destroy systems previously established ; 
so that the throwing away of the advantages they have 
so peacefully gained would be a peculiarly gratuitous and 
wanton act. The example of England, however, is telling 
powerfully upon other nations, and happily the rapidity 
with which the English-speaking races are multiplying 
will tell yet more, since in a few centuries " English " will 
be the language of the world. 

Nevertheless the action of the first (pagan or monistic) 
tendency is to be feared as a powerful agent hostile 
to freedom, existing concealed amongst those who are 
now active in the destruction of the last relics of the 
mediseval theocracy in the name of liberty. Such agents 
are seeking to destroy them, not in the interest of natural 
freedom, but for the establishment of a revived paganism 
and dominant and intolerant " naturalism " to which they 
are passionately attached. They therefore seek to bind in 



82 Contemporary Evolution. 

fetters the opponents of their unchristian anti-theocracy \ 
the establishment and endowment of which they desire 
to effect. Hence those justifications and laudations of 
active persecution to which Professor Huxley and others* 
have given utterance. 

Our empire, by a happy combination of circumstances, 
and by the merits of the races which inhabit it, has long 
been the conspicuous assertor of freedom. The sentiment 
in favour of wide liberty to the individual citizen- — in 
speech, in w r riting, in locomotion and association — has not 
only taken deep hold of our own people, but also of the 
population of that magnificent transatlantic republic, the 
greatest glory of which is the perfect freedom of its 
citizens. 

By a series of happily devised measures perseveringly 
perfected through more than a century, this civic liberty 
has been defined and ever more efficiently guarded, — the 
tyrannical measures of Stuart as of Tudor being repu- 
diated in principle no less than practically. 

It is to be hoped that the force of this traditional cur- 
rent in favour of individual liberty in England is too 
strong to be reversed or turned aside. Nevertheless there 
is a certain danger that the "No Popery" prejudice may 

* E.g., " In the judgment of history the tyrannisms of free thought 
may be justified." — Westminster Review, October, 1873, P» 4 J 3- On 
this subject see "Lessons from Nature" (Murray, 1876), chapter 
xiii., p. 396. 






Three Ideals. 83 



to such an extent favour the efforts of the anti-Christian 
fanatics as to prejudice the conservatism of our civic 
freedom. 

At the least it has influenced public opinion with re- 
gard to continental politics, so far that the leaders of 
that opinion condone or even applaud measures which are 
directly opposed to all our traditional Liberal legislation. 

This no doubt is partly owing to the complexity of 
the struggle going on between Church and State in 
Germany, and a failure to distinguish between two very 
different sets of actions which are respectively the ex- 
pression of the two different tendencies which have been 
above distinguished as civicism and paganism. 

One of these, civicism, is the continuance of the 
general movement hostile to Christian theocracy, the 
tendency of which movement is to break off religion 
from connection with the State, and to withdraw from 
those citizens who choose to devote themselves to reli- 
gion all exceptional privileges, and all power or control 
over the civil acts of those who do not voluntarily seek 
their ministry. With this movement the traditional 
Liberals of England may well enough sympathise. 

The other — the pagan, or monistic — tendency, is to 
convey to the numerical majority of the nation an ab- 
solute power over all the external manifestations of 
internal belief, an absolute power over their persons and 
their property ; in a word, to erect a more thorough and 



84 Contemporary Evolution. 

degrading despotism than Europe has seen since the 
downfall of the pagan Caesars. 

No doubt many honest men favour the Prussian Church 
Laws because they see that they favour the first ten- 
dency, and because they do not perceive how they are 
really inspired by the second or pagan spirit. 

This confusion is favoured by those who (however 
justly they may assert their legal or their treaty rights) 
oppose the laws by protests in favour of the " liberty of 
the Church," " Christian marriage," the " rights of the 
bishops,'' etc. An opposition necessarily futile (unless the 
whole modern movement can be reversed or arrested), 
because " civicism " knows nothing of " the Church," or 
" Christianity," or " bishops," as such (only recognising 
individual citizens and their rights against reciprocal 
encroachment), while " paganism " hates all three. 

On the other hand, many of those who advocate the 
new laws out of a spirit of opposition to medisevalism, 
forget, or do not understand, that they are trampling on 
the most fundamental rights of their fellow-citizens, and 
erecting a tyranny which has much less to say in its de- 
fence, and is indefinitely more autocratic in its principles 
than the old system they, in the spirit of their age, oppose. 

According to the spirit of modern freedom, indivi- 
duals are perfectly free — with the limitations - before 
mentioned— to form themselves into associations in which 
their mutual relations are regulated by mutual consent, 



Three Ideals. 85 



and free to exclude from their voluntary society indi- 
viduals who do not conform to the rules they have 
freely chosen for their own regulation ; — no one citizen 
having the right to intrude himself upon the society of 
others who do not approve of him. 

But the new laws, in fact, deny to citizens the right 
to group and associate themselves in voluntary associa- 
tions, to select freely from their fellow-citizens those to 
whom they will confide the education of their children, 
or to obey the dictates of their conscience by acts which 
are innocent of encroaching on the similar rights of other 
citizens. 

To deny the right of an episcopally nominated Roman 
Catholic priest to officiate in a parish, the Roman 
Catholic parishioners of which desire him, is to infringe, 
not so much his rights, as the rights of election of those 
citizens who by the fact that they call themselves Roman 
Catholics show that they have delegated that power to 
their bishop, and that they elect as their minister that 
citizen who is selected by such bishop. To exile or 
imprison such Roman Catholic bishop is to outrage the 
rights of a yet greater number — the Roman Catholics 
of the diocese, who show by their calling themselves 
Roman Catholics that they, in fact, voluntarily elect as 
the citizen to whom they will stand in a certain voluntary 
relation — that one who is indicated to them by, and who 
is in communion with the Roman pontiff. 



86 Contemporary Evolution. 

To attempt to impede excommunication, is to deny 
to citizens the right to exclude from a voluntary society 
members who do not conform to freely chosen rules. 

To violate the freedom of person and property of 
citizens without trial, without even one distinct definite 
accusation — even though such citizens call themselves 
Jesuits — is a glaring injustice ; but greater, though less 
glaring, is the tyranny thereby inflicted on thousands of 
citizens whose rights of choice and election are violated 
by such acts, and whose most earnest desires and wishes 
as to themselves, and their children and friends, are 
thereby trampled on. 

The citizens calling themselves Jesuits have gross 
wrong done them ; their parents, brothers, sisters, and 
personal friends suffer hardships hardly less patent ; but 
unnoticed and apparently unthought of are the wrongs 
of the thousands who have been deprived of their 
greatest comfort — thousands of the most innocent and 
most helpless citizens of the State. Who can tell the 
hundreds of fond mothers, faithful wives, and tender 
sisters who have bitterly wept the forced departure of 
the guardians and supporters in virtue of wayward sons, 
errant husbands, and erring brothers. These and cognate 
considerations will reveal a mass of silent suffering, 
suffering perhaps greater than that produced by many a 
bloody battlefield. 

The effect of bias, so strongly put forward by Mr. 



Three Ideals. 87 



Herbert Spencer in the " Study of Sociology " could 
hardly find a better exemplification than the dispositions 
felt by so many Englishmen to these acts. This may 
be made clear if we suppose similar acts under other 
circumstances. Let us suppose that a law was passed 
that no one might assume, or change, an office in any 
Freemasons' lodge without the expressed assent of the 
Government ; also, that no member of the Freemasons' 
body, whatever secrets he might have violated or rules 
transgressed, might be officially blamed in or be excluded 
from masonic society without the permission of the 
Government being first asked and obtained. It is hardly 
likely but that even non-masonic Englishmen would 
deem such legislation a daring infringement of the liberties 
of the subject. 

But if another law were passed summarily expelling 
from England all Freemasons and confiscating Masonic 
property, what would be the outcry ! This, however, is 
by no means all. We must further suppose, that a law 
was passed giving the police authorities power at their 
discretion, to declare, without proof, any man or woman 
whatever, belonging to any voluntary association, to be, 
in spite of their denials, affiliated masons, and to expel 
them accordingly. The iniquity of the measure is so 
monstrous as to impair the force of the supposition by 
its very monstrosity, and the impossibility of really con- 
ceiving it to be done in England. 



88 Contemporary Evolution. 

Yet this is literally what has taken place in Prussia with 
the applause, mirabile dictu, of " Liberals." It is of 
the A, B, C of our system, that no man should be pun- 
ished without a trial. Yet in Germany, because citizens 
happen voluntarily to belong to a private society which 
has not a fragment of power over its members beyond 
what such members voluntarily concede — nay, even 
because police authorities choose, without evidence pro- 
duced, to say that any citizens are affiliated to such a 
society — they have, * not only been held up to public 
ignominy by official utterances, but have actually been 
torn away from friends and relations and their locomotion 
restricted within narrow limits, or they have been expelled 
the country, and their very persons, in some instances, 
treated with cruel violence. 

These citizens are meantime accused of no definite 
crime ; in spite of demands, they are brought to no 
trial and have no opportunity given them of self-justifi- 
cation. 

As we said just now, the effect of bias could hardly 
go further than to make Englishmen, who blame the 
expulsion of the Moors and Jews from Spain, applaud 
such acts. 

And what is the authority that dares thus to outrage 
and trample on the primary rights of citizens ? The 
German government is a modern one ; it is based on the 
modern basis — popular will, not on an asserted and 



Three Ideals. 89 



externally recognised God-given power like that of the 
thrice-crowned kaisers of mediaeval times. 

It is true that the emperor in his not very wise and 
not very truthful * letter to the pope, talks about his 
" responsibility to God w for his sovereign acts, and it is 
generally supposed he asserts for himself a divine right. 
But for this assertion he has nothing to show, no external 
witness, as before said, or objective testimony. If Kaiser 
Wilhelm can raise the dead, he may resuscitate in his 
Berlin subjects a belief in his own supernatural authority. 
But the acts of his Government lead more and more in 
the anti-theocratic direction, and its true basis will thus 
be more and more plainly avowed to be the will and 
consent of the majority of his subjects. It comes then 

* " Not very wise," because his reply as to what Protestants be- 
lieve concerning " One Mediator," has nothing whatever to do with 
the pope's remark respecting the necessary consequences of baptism. 
" Not very truthful," for two reasons : first, because he therein implies 
an accusation of treason against citizens who in vain ask for an oppor- 
tunity of showing their innocence by a public trial, the laws of Prussia 
not enabling the bishops to bring an action for libel against 
the minister by whom the letter is countersigned; secondly, be- 
cause he replies to what every one knows was not the pope's meaning. 
The pope, of course, knew well enough that according to constitu- 
tional fictions, the emperor must officially approve of all his minister's 
acts, but La Marmora's book has shown us how in the past he was led 
by his minister in opposition to his real private wishes. The pope, of 
course, hoped and thought that in the recent Church laws he was also 
being led in opposition to his private wishes, and some who know the 
Berlin court well still believe that in so thinking the pope was right 




go Contemporary Evohction, 

to this, that the actual or apparent majority of Germans 
claim the power to dispose absolutely and without appeal 
of the minority ; to dictate to them their mutual voluntary 
relations, determine the amount of their locomotion, or 
even their very residence within the land — to fix for them 
the dogmas of their creed and their mode of worship, and 
to enforce the education of their children in a belief 
directly contradicting that of their parents. 

Yet the Times has gone the length of asserting that 
Prussia has the right to do this now, because of what we 
did three hundred years ago in England, as if no progress 
had taken place within that period, even were the circum- 
stances the same, which they manifestly are not. 

Yet the Times would hardly venture to approve of the 
passing of a l * bill of attainder " against a political oppo- 
nent of the English sovereign of to-day, or the summary 
decapitation of any illustrious lady whose existence might 
be personally inconvenient to some future chief ruler. 

But the circumstances are manifestly not the same. 
They are not so, because the bishops and clergy generally 
may, in the absence of conspicuous protests to the con- 
trary, be fairly taken as the representative of the religious 
opinions of those to whom they minister. Now in England 
the great majority of the clergy submitted to the change 
which Henry VIII, introduced. The act of his legislature 
which abolished State recognition of papal supremacy in 
England did not violate the rights of citizens in anything 



Three Ideals. 91 



like the degree in which the recently made Church laws 
of Germany violate them. Again, the English Church of 
the sixteenth century was that of the entire people ; but 
in Prussia the persecuted Church is that of but a portion, 
and its legal rights and the claims of its members on the 
State are different in different regions, according to the 
date and the terms of the acquisition of such regions by 
the Prussian kings. There is yet another contrast in our 
favour. What we did we did openly and above-board, 
but the German Government has by its agents added the 
meanness of mendacity to brutal outrage ; since it has 
now and again been asserted that the Roman Catholic 
religion is not persecuted, and while papal supremacy 
is not in express terms abolished, it is virtually and 
effectively set aside and practically annulled. A new 
State religion is, in fact, set up and sought to be forced 
upon citizens by the May laws. To ask Roman Catholic 
citizens to acquiesce in such laws is to ask them to 
lie — to apostatise from their religion, and at the same 
time to pretend to adhere to it. In principle there is 
no difference whatever between asking a Roman Catholic 
of to-day to perform some outward act of assent to the 
recent Church legislation of Germany and asking a 
primitive Christian to burn incense to the genius of the 
emperor. 

A demand on Roman Catholics to admit that Dr. 
Reinkens is a Catholic bishop is a grotesque insult to 



92 Contemporary Evolution. 

their reason as well as an outrage to their conscience.* It 
amounts to a demand that they should recognise the 
majority of their fellow-citizens as having the power to 
determine for them what they shall deem to be essential 
characters of their own spiritual chiefs. On this principle 
the emperor's government might require that the title of 
"Catholic bishop" should be given to Baron Rothschild, 
and hardly less absurd would be the requisition that 
Bismarck should be everywhere in Germany received and 
treated as a " 'princess? 

It is a matter of deep regret that religious antipathy 
should cause many in England to sympathise with acts so 
entirely opposed to English social and political principles, 
but the outcome will probably bring about a juster view. 

* The complete abandonment of the Christian standpoint by those 
who advocate new State religions, even when such advocates are 
disguised as ecclesiastics, is curiously illustrated by the declaration of 
Dr. Reinkens (when taking his oath to the State). He then declared 
that if the State should hereafter require of him acts inconsistent with 
his duty as a Christian bishop, he would resign his office rather than 
oppose it. Now the universally received ideal of a Christian bishop 
is that of a shepherd who feeds his flock with sound doctrine and 
protects it from the attacks of mundane wolves. What Dr. Reinkens 
asserts as incumbent upon him he, of course, by implication asserts 
to be also the duty of other bishops. Thus, according to him, the 
duty of bishops in the presence of a Government which has become 
hostile to Christianity is to desert their charges and to leave their 
starving flocks to the mercy of the wolves, as this eminent pastor 
professes beforehand his readiness to do : " The hireling fleeth, 
because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep." 



Three Ideals. 93 



That such acts should be applauded by many and 
tolerated by more in Germany is not surprising, for two 
reasons : first, because of the grinding tyranny under 
which that country has so long lain, it is not wonderful 
that freedom is not really prized when it is not experi- 
mentally known. It is not surprising, secondly, because 
of the prodigious extent to which Hegelianism, or some 
cognate form of pantheism, has filtered down through so- 
ciety in all directions. Hence, a willing idolatry of " the 
State " as of some all potent fetish. It seems hardly 
to occur to any one, then, to ask the single question, 
"What is the State ?" and to recognise the truth that 
this much venerated " State " is but a name for the 
governing majority of the citizens. When this simple 
fact becomes generally known, the sacred right of any 
score of men to regulate the actions, words, and thoughts 
of any dozen, will in all probability cease to be acquiesced 
in with so much reverential and unquestioning awe, and 
citizens will be less ready to prostrate themselves before 
the car of such a Juggernath as the military despotism 
which calls itself " the State " in Prussia. 

Fortunately, however, in such action as is now going on 
in Prussia and Switzerland, an effect is being produced 
exactly contrary to that which the actors desire. 

That such a contrary effect should be produced is quite 
in accordance with Mr. Herbert Spencer's whole teaching. 
He tells us: "Feelings called into play . . . will 



94 Contemporary Evolution. 

strengthen, while those which have diminished demands 
on them will dwindle."* 

Under the sway of a benevolent government there is 
a certain natural tendency amongst Christians to feeble 
volitions in support of their religion, from the small 
opportunities offered for the energetic exercise of such 
volitions. On the other hand, a persecution such as is 
now going on tends, as so many of the elections prove 
(more even by the increase in the number of opposition 
voters than by the ntimber of Christian members returned), 
to elicit acts which by their very exercise strengthen the 
feelings and stimulate the volitions which gave them birth. 
Moreover, as the persecution increases in intensity, the 
reaction in favour of civic freedom (already evinced by no 
inconsiderable support) will also increase, and these effects 
must continue till the cause is removed. More and more 
respect and sympathy for the Roman Catholic clergy 
will be felt and manifested by an increasing number of 
Protestants who see that the former are fighting their 
battle also, and who admire their courage and constancy. 
Thus a great strengthening of the Roman Catholic Church 
in Prussia cannot but be the final result of these hostile 
efforts, since the times do not admit, as yet, of a bloody 
war of extermination. 

Nevertheless, the anti-theocratic tendency will probably 
remain too powerful to allow of a simple reversal of the 

* " Study of Sociology," p. 372. 



Three Ideals. 95 



recent legislation, and thus a tertiam quid will be arrived 
at by the consent of the Roman Catholics, and of those 
who, being in favour of civic freedom, do not (like the 
Reinkenists and fanatical pagans) desire the State es- 
tablishment of a rival system. 

This tertiiim quid must be the severance of Church 
and State — another important step in that great process 
of six centuries' growth which it has been here endea- 
voured to depict. 

To return from this digression : it seems that social 
evolution, if it continues to advance along the same path 
as hitherto, must mean the entire destruction of the 
mediaeval Christian theocracy. 

If this destruction should be accompanied by the uni- 
versal enforcement of a rival pagan system, an anti- 
theocratic establishment, the effect would no doubt be 
most disastrous for Christianity. It may, however, be 
confidently affirmed that, whatever be the extravagances 
of the paganism to come, no attempt to erect a universal 
pagan #/z/z-theocratic and pantheistic despotism could 
resist the hostile coalition of Christians with all those 
who desire the natural liberty of the individual citizen. 
The monstrous claim of men, as mere men, to control 
and direct the consciences of their fellows, could never 
succeed in justifying itself to the human reason. 

With a regime of true freedom, that is, where there is 
liberty and order, experience shows us that Christianity 
can grow and thrive. 



96 Contemporary Evohttion. 

If, instead of paganism, civicism gains the day (the 
second of the three systems now struggling for sway), 
it is difficult to see how the latter can have any positive 
religious effect whatever. The merely negative action of 
depriving all religions of any State support is but the 
forming of "a fair field and no favour/' where success 
must depend on quite other than political causes. 

Such, at least, is the conclusion which seems forced 
on us at a first glance, but a satisfactory conclusion can- 
not be arrived at without some further examination. 

There are, however, not a few persons who apprehend 
that instead of our soon seeing an orderly system of 
civic freedom, European society is simply tending to 
disintegration and anarchy. Now, of course, a lapse into 
utter barbarism would necessarily carry with it a destruc- 
tion of Christianity, since Christianity supposes the exist- 
ence of a certain degree of natural social evolution ; such, 
e.g., as that of "the family" — an institution at which 
the hostile efforts of the most " advanced " reformers 
are directly aimed. 

It is certainly conceivable that at least such anarchy 
as lately arose in parts of Spain, and as prevailed for a 
short time in Paris, might extend itself over a much wider 
area. Not many of those who enjoyed the most refined 
salons of the French capital under Louis XV. would 
have believed it possible that all France before the cen- 
tury ended could have presented the spectacle that it 



Three Ideals. 97 



did during the worst moments of the " Terror." Men 
may have similar blindness to-day. 

We have seen how that support of our European 
social organisation, which consisted in a widely diffused 
belief in its divine ordination, has been gradually with- 
drawn, and naturally and necessarily the support derived 
from a simple acceptance of Christian morality is con- 
comitantly weakened — that morality being replaced by 
other systems, and ultimately by the teaching which 
now issues from our nationally supreme sources of cul- 
ture. (1) That right is but another name for pleasure ; 
(2) that temporal good is the only good to be sought 
after or desired ; and (3) that no man has control over or 
is responsible for his actions. 

It is difficult to think that the wide reception of these 
doctrines amongst the lowest classes will not be attended 
with very considerable transformations, and those are 
certainly not altogether devoid of rational grounds of 
apprehension, who fear that as the Graeco-Roman civili- 
sation was ruined through the invasion of barbarians from 
without, so existing civilisation may be destroyed through 
an eruption of barbarians from below. And when we 
consider the intimate' relations existing between that 
civilisation and Christianity, there can be little cause for 
wonder either that Christianity itself should for a time 
share in such unpopularity as our social system may 
have acquired, or that that system itself should vanish 



9 8 Contemporary Evolution. 

simultaneously with a wide-spread, avowed, and open 
renunciation of the religion which gave birth to, and 
was so intimately blended with it. 

Can Christian monarchy rationally survive for many 
centuries the dethronement of the power that consecrated 
it ? Nobles, the descendants of those who robbed the 
Church — that is, the whole of their poorer fellow-citizens 
— for their own selfish aggrandisement, should hardly be 
surprised if fresh injustice again plunders them. A pluto- 
cracy of merchants, manufacturers, and wealthy profes- 
sional men offers little to impress the masses with a sense 
of its inviolable sanctity. 

The highest triumphs of art, magnificent decorations, 
the richest products of the loom, profusion of gold and 
jewels, — these things as used by the Church were at least 
for the enjoyment of the multitude. There will be little 
cause for astonishment if that multitude ultimately objects 
to the withdrawal of these things into the palaces of 
kings and of princes, whether feudal or mercantile ; or to 
the exclusive appropriation of some of them for the pri- 
vate use of rich women, however virtuous, or of beauties 
however vile. 

Wrong has been destroyed to give way to other wrong, 
injustice has been displaced by fresh injustice, till much 
honest indignation reinforces that spirit of revolt against 
our existing social system which so widely pervades the 
masses in the great European cities, producing an accu- 



Three Ideals. 99 



mulated aversion from a civilisation which has cast off 
almost all the grace, with much of the material, and still 
more of the moral alleviations, which attended the earlier 
condition of the Christian theocracy. 

It would be unjust to our species to deny the miti- 
gating circumstances attending the surging of democratic 
passion to-day. Careworn toilers may view with com- 
placency the glittering splendour of barons whose rank 
they view as God-ordained and yet evanescent, they being 
essentially and for eternity but the equals of themselves, 
whose humble path is no less God-appointed, and on that 
account no less worthy of esteem — both being actors for 
a little time upon the same stage, and to be judged 
not by their accidental trappings, but by their due fulfil- 
ment of their respective parts ! 

But this belief has been, and is being sedulously de- 
stroyed. Can we wonder that with its disappearance the 
same phenomena come to be viewed in a very different 
aspect ? 

Nevertheless, there are grounds for thinking that the 
violences of social antagonisms are on the whole likely to 
diminish, however noisily or brutally they may upon 
occasions here and there assert themselves. Even if 
Europe should become the scene of disorder which some 
fear, it is impossible that the whole world can simul- 
taneously be the theatre of the most extreme and bloody 
red-revolutionary tyranny. 

LOFC. 



ioo Contemporary Evolution. 

Those imbued with the doctrine of evolution can hardly 
accept a belief that the process of social development 
has culminated in Europe, considering how distant from 
attainable perfection is the stage already reached ; and the 
assertion that it has done so in the whole world would 
probably be considered by them a manifest absurdity. 

Going then to the extreme of what can be deemed 
possible, however wildly improbable, let us imagine that 
private freehold property in land has been universally 
abolished, that complicated regulations are in force tend- 
ing everywhere to depress the capitalist at the expense 
of the artisan, that throughout Europe a persecution has 
raged which has resulted in the slaughter of every bishop 
and the majority of the clergy, as well as the abolition 
of every religious order, and the destruction of every 
single church. Let us suppose, also, that purely secular 
instruction is everywhere compulsorily given, and that 
relations between the sexes of the extremest degree of 
laxity become recognised by law. What would be the 
effect of so profound and extensive a revolution on the 
Christian Church ? In the first place, the universality 
of that Church would manifestly enable its supreme head 
ever to find a shelter, and in the supposed condition of 
Europe that refuge might well be found in the great 
republic of the west. Similarly, institutions for the carry- 
ing on of the traditional culture of the clergy would for a 
time become extra-European. 



Three Ideals. i o i 



The Church has no absolute necessity for property in 
land, as past persecutions have abundantly demonstrated. 

The slaughter of bishops would but lead to the con- 
secration of others desirous of shedding their blood for 
the faith, while the monarchal constitution of the Church, 
made still more marked since the Vatican Council, would 
enable the government of the European missionary Church 
to be carried on, if needful, without bishops, under the 
direct episcopal jurisdiction of the pope. The Church of 
Japan has survived through the rage of persecution with- 
out the aid even of a single priest, native or foreign. 

The elevation of. the artisan class, when once effected, 
would put an end to their hostility to the Church, since 
that hostility has mainly arisen from a belief that the 
action of the Church was prejudicial to their elevation. 
No inevitable antagonism divides the clergy as such from 
the humblest classes, and the illustrious head of the English 
Church has publicly shown in his own person how warm 
are His Eminence's sympathies for the depressed agricul- 
tural labourer. 

Unless, again, we hereafter find reason to think that 
scientific and philosophical evolution will be fatal to the 
Church, the action of compulsory secular instruction must 
also ultimately result in such disappointment, since Chris- 
tians would be forced once more, as of old, to give at 
home that intelligent and emotional training in doctrine 
and practice, the effect of which no public teaching can 



102 Contemporary Evolution. 

rival, and by which the influence of pagan schools was 
successfully combated in former times. 

With the revoluntary changes here supposed once intro- 
duced, all the causes of the present popular antipathy to 
Christianity would be removed, except those resulting 
from fear of the attractive influences of its morality, and 
from the possible prevalence of an anti-Christian phi- 
losophy, the action of which will be considered in the next 
chapter. 

The disorders springing from a general relaxation of 
sexual morality can hardly fail to give rise to a reaction 
in favour of Christian ethics on the part of an increasing 
portion of the population, if only through the gradual 
extinction by natural decay of the families of the most 
sexually vicious. 

The abolition of religious orders must cease when once 
individual liberty for citizens begins to assert itself, since 
citizens cannot be free if they are not permitted by their 
fellow-citizens to live peaceably together in voluntary 
associations, eating, dressing, and reading according to 
their pleasure, as long as they limit not the similar rights 
of others. 

- But even before the introduction of such common indi- 
vidual freedom, it is almost impossible for the most 
tyrannical State to interfere with the practice of the 
evangelical counsels — voluntary poverty, chastity, and 
obedience. Each successive great epoch of the Church 



Three Ideals. 103 



has been fruitful of fresh modes of their manifestation, 
and some new embodiment of the ascetic spirit has ap- 
peared for a time on the crest of the advancing wave of 
Christian aggression on the world. After the martyrs 
came the Fathers of the Desert, then the Benedictines, to 
be succeeded by the white-robed Cistercians, themselves 
to give way to the friars, whose influence was afterwards 
overshadowed by the valiant soldiers of Loyola. Arguing 
simply from analogy, it is not likely but that the same 
cause may produce again effects similarly appropriate to 
time and place. The old religious orders did not adopt 
picturesque or fantastic costumes, but slight modifications 
of fashions in vogue in their day amongst the poorest 
class, so that each at its origin appeared far less peculiar 
than at present. 

Hard work and charity under one form or another were 
universally obligatory, and to this day the Trappist works 
like a day-labourer. It may well be then that manual 
toil in other forms, and a fresh modification of fraternal 
charity, will cause religious congregations to be as heartily 
welcomed and beloved by a socially democratic republican 
community as ever they were in the ninth, thirteenth, or 
sixteenth centuries. 

Even under a communistic regime, presided over by 
some "Albert ouvrier," a body of workmen who were 
only distinguished from their fellows by a larger spirit of 
fraternity, and a disposition to take a greater share of 



J04 Contemporary Evolution. 

work than others, while at the same time they ap- 
propriated a less portion of its fruit, would speedily be 
popular ; and a love for God might soon come to be 
pardoned, when it was seen to be accompanied by an 
earnest and self-sacrificing love for man. 

Sisters of Charity have met with respect even from 
the roughest of French " Reds," and all hostility to them 
would disappear when they ceased to be ideally connected 
with a political system which kept democracy in check, 
or sought so to keep it. 

It, seems, then, that no necessarily fatal result to 
Christianity may be expected from the wildest political 
changes ; but rather that an extreme advance of the 
modern spirit may give rise to fresh Christian develop- 
ments. But such disorders as are here spoken of, such 
rapid and sudden destruction of the existing European 
social fabric, are really in the highest degree unlikely. 
It seems far more probable that a system of freedom on 
the English and American models, more and more ap- 
proximating to what has been called civicism — that is, the 
ideal of Mr. Herbert Spencer — will be gradually, and in the 
majority of cases peacefully attained, although with much 
vexatious, though not violent, persecution from devotees 
of paganism. (See note, p. 122.) Should such be the 
real future, experience already shows us how disappointed 
will be those who expect the destruction of Christianity 
from political changes favourable to democracy. 






Three Ideals. 105 



In America we see before us undeniable evidence that 
the Church can not only exist, but grow and thrive, in the 
freest political atmosphere — shown more by the multi- 
plication and spread of religious orders and the up-growth 
of a native-born clergy, than even by the augmentation 
of the episcopate. There (in New York) has arisen a new 
religious congregation — -the Paulists — -the founder and 
head of which, Father Hecker, is a typical example of 
the Church of the United States ; not less conspicuous 
for love of his country and admiration of its politico-social 
system than for unhesitating and unquestioning obedience 
and loyalty to the head of his Church. 

The Unitecl States have also supplied us with a crucial 
test of the power of the Church to resist the strongest 
secular influences hostile to its integrity. 

During the late memorable war almost every uncatholic 
form of Christianity became split and divided into a 
northern and a southern, an anti-slavery and a pro-slavery 
body. The Church alone maintained its unity perfectly 
unbroken, and was thus enabled more efficiently to aid in 
healing the moral, disunion, and allaying the heartburn- 
ings which remained after the victory, by which unbroken 
unity many earnest minds in the great republic have been 
deeply impressed. 

In Belgium, again, we see how the Church can not only 
prosper under free institutions, but have so energetic and 
vigorous a life as to provoke a violent, though groundless 



106 Contemporary Evolution. 

dread of the re-establishment of mediaevalism. How it 
lives in England and Ireland we see. 

Again : the fact that complete civic freedom favours 
the Church's growth may be gathered from those who 
clamour for a retention of the last remnants of the old 
theocratic system as barriers to " ultramontanism." It is 
on this very ground that the separation between Church 
and State in Bavaria and South Germany is opposed by 
" Liberal Catholics/* and that such a union is sought by 
Dr. Reinkens, while M. Loyson has proclaimed it an honour 
to Christianity to obtain State recognition and support. 
Even in England the disestablishment of the Anglican 
Church is opposed by those who dread the growth of 
definite " dogma " and " ecclesiastical tyranny," and 
clamour for "spiritual freedom," as understood by Dean 
Stanley and his school. 

It seems, then, that the completion of the great modern 
anti-theocratic movement (if developed in the direction, 
not of a State-supported paganism, but in that of civicism 
— that system of mutual respect and individual freedom 
which expedience and natural morality agree to justify), 
by no means necessarily implies a weakening, still less a 
destruction of the Church ; whilst facts are not wanting 
which seem to indicate a thence resulting increase in its 
vigour and efficiency. It is not sluggish majorities, but 
active, concentrated, and aggressive minorities which in- 
fluence the world's course most effectually. 



Three Ideals. 107 



But a process of internal integration has been spoken of 
as possibly accompanying the external disintegration of 
that great complex organism, the Church. To make this 
manifest would require little less than a history of the 
development of Church doctrine and discipline from the 
thirteenth century to the present day. It will, however, 
hardly be contested that the whole course of such develop- 
ment has tended to give more and more precision and 
distinctness to the Church's dogmas, and efficiency to the 
action of its governing power. If the number of regular 
clergy has relatively diminished, the whole mass of the 
secular clergy (as it is often reproachfully said) has become 
more and more approximated to a great body of regu- 
lars. The perfection of the Church's organisation, the 
definiteness and clearness of doctrine it has attained, 
could not well have been made more manifest than by 
the acquiescence of the whole episcopate, without one 
solitary dissentient voice, in the recent Vatican Decrees. 
Thus, it cannot be denied that, pari passu with the dis- 
integration arising from the increasing disability or dis- 
inclination of kings (or other and subordinate social 
authorities) to enforce the decisions and behests of the 
Church, the Church herself has simultaneously developed, 
by a process of integration, a vastly increased power of 
herself, promulgating, applying, and giving effect to them 
over all those who voluntarily accept her spiritual sway. 
The downfall of the chief pontiff's spiritual princedom, 



108 Contemporary Evolution. 

which marks the formal end of Christendom, was almost 
immediately preceded by the culmination of his spiritual 
power through * the universal acceptance by the whole 
Church of his official infallibility, than which no step 
could be more calculated to give vigour, precision, and 
unanimity to the action of the whole body. 

Moreover, even material inventions and improvements 
have strikingly co-operated in the same direction. The 
facilities afforded to locomotion, and the transmission of 
intelligence by railways and the electric telegraph, set at 
defiance the old restrictions as to the publication of bulls 
and other machinery of Church government. 

It is also undeniable that outside the Church's organ- 
isation there has gone on a movement, parallel with 
the latter phases of the movement distinctive of the 
Christian theocracy. In England, besides the great 
tractarian and ritualistic development of Anglicanism, a 
movement towards increased orthodoxy or towards eccle- 
siasticism {e.g., as evidenced architecturally), has gone on 
even in nonconformist bodies. In Germany, while on the 
one hand rationalism is increasing, on the other an upward 
reaction is setting in amongst evangelical Christians which 
the Bismarckian persecution cannot but aid in developing. 
Even in Holland there has been, and is,"* a powerful and 
extensive movement in an upward direction. 

* See Contemporary Review, November, 1873, P- 955* 






Three Ideals. 109 



Moreover, one important effect of the great modern 
movement will be to let in upon the Christian Church the 
full action of the destructive agencies of nature, com- 
monly termed collectively " natural selection." 

During the period in which the Church had full 
temporal support and sheltered within its fold whole 
nations, with hardly an avowed dissentient, the following 
merely natural effects must have inclined to mar its 
efficiency : — 

1. Want of the stimulus of opposition, tending to 
diminish the vigour of efforts for its support and ex- 
tension. 

2. A similarly diminished need for the diffusion of a 
keen, intelligent, and reasoned apprehension of its doc- 
trines and teachings. 

3. A lowered moral tone from the influence of the 
indifferent majority — resulting in diminished efforts after 
a life in accordance with Christian precepts and counsels. 
This is owing to a diffusion over the whole body of the 
spirit governing the majority, which spirit in almost every 
large community is otiose and indifferent In the days 
of the Church's temporal prosperity the indifferent were 
included within the Church, instead of being visibly 
external to it, and so tended to lower the tone of the 
whole. 

Thus an unenergetic, tepid, unintelligently apprehensive, 
and morally inconsistent spirit, may but too naturally tend 



no Contemporary Evolution. 

to diffuse itself over a temporally-supported, honoured 
and wealthy Church, which has no declared dissidents in 
the area in which it exists. 

When such a theocratically organised Christian com- 
munity becomes, by revolution, exposed to the free 
assaults of enemies the most varied, with disestablishment 
and disendowment as a result, the first effect must be 
the falling away from the Church of those who either 
morally or intellectually, or both, are out of harmony 
with her. 

Freedom of inquiry, with all other freedom, as it 
becomes more and more a settled institution, will more 
and more incline to diminish the effects of mere traditional 
adherence to family creed, and the passage to and fro 
will become more and more easy. Thus those with pro- 
clivities towards the Church, but who have been brought 
up from childhood external to her, will more readily find 
their true level, while those brought up within her pale, 
but who in spirit have revolted from her sway, will, by 
becoming manifestly external to her, cease to disgrace her 
or to lower the moral tone of her community. 

Freedom of marriage, amongst other freedoms, will 
tend to produce strong hereditary predispositions, both for 
and in opposition to Christianity, but there will also be 
a most important action tending to favour the increase 
in number of those Christianly predisposed. This action 
is the stringent religious obligation imposed on married 



Three Ideals. 1 1 1 



Christians in no way to impede their natural multiplica- 
tion, whilst the opposite practice is being widely urged 
outside the Church, and is likely to act as an increasing 
check on pagan propagation. 

Moreover, as the two tendencies which have been here 
distinguished as "civicism " and "paganism" become dis- 
entangled and distinguished, an immense twofold gain 
must accrue to ' Christianity, if the modern movement 
continues so successfully and irresistibly that the tendency 
to revive the mediaeval system becomes extinct. On the 
one hand, that activity which is now directed to a revival 
of mediaevalism will be set free and applied to the protec- 
tion of freedom against pagan despotism. On the other 
hand, nine tenths of the present hostility to the Church 
will have ceased when it is clearly and generally seen that 
no desire or intention of reviving mediaevalism exists in it 
Then those who are anti-theists, and fanatically opposed 
to Christianity in the interest of paganism, will stand alone 
against the combined opposition of Christians and advo- 
cates of freedom — that is, against those who can heartily 
combine on a basis of God-given natural right, whether 
that right be. or be not supplemented and further enforced 
by divine revelation. 

Thus it seems that when perfect free play is allowed, 
the Church must come to be more and more composed 
of naturally-selected citizens whose intellect fully approves 
her doctrines, and whose modes of life more or less fully 



1 1 2 Coutempoi'ary EvohUion. 

harmonise with her precepts and counsels. Moreover, 
such citizens will naturally have their emotions more and 
more strongly excited, and their volitions rendered more 
and more vigorous, by those very actions which the 
struggle for existence renders needful in support and ex- 
tension of that system to which they adhere, and which 
the fact of their adhesion under varying circumstances 
tends more and more to elicit. 

Such, then, seems to be the answer afforded by the facts 
to the calm judicial-inquirer who seeks to ascertain what 
must be the effect (through the operation of merely natural 
laws, upon the Christian Church) of the further continuance 
of the political portion of the great modern movement in 
the direction it has so long followed. 

(i.) The effect on Christianity will be to give increased 
coherence and strength to its organisation, and efficiency to its 
action, 

(2.) The result of the conflict will depend, not on political 
changes, but on those matters which must occupy us hereafter 
— science and philosophy. 

He, however, who wishes to judge fully of the matter 
here treated should endeavour to place himself in imagin- 
ation at the Churchman's standpoint, and consider how he 
might express himself as to the course of modern political 
evolution in relation to Christianity. 

The Churchman might express his sentiments somewhat 
thus : 



Three Ideals. \\% 



" The Church as a whole has never known retrogression 
or defeat since she first stepped forth from the upper 
chamber in Jerusalem, conquering and to conquer. The 
Church's progress is to be estimated not by the number of 
souls who externally profess belief in her, but by the num- 
ber who obey her laws in a sufficient degree to obtain 
their salvation. 

"When the Church, in mounting the throne with 
Constantine, obtained what in the eyes of the world was a 
startling triumph, she made no doubt a true and proper 
step in advance, but one attended with many concomitant 
disadvantages and dangers. In condescending to allow 
her sacred monogram to adorn imperial standards, and in 
permitting kings to sanctify their diadems with the sign of 
the Cross, gratitude was due from powers so favoured to 
the Church which granted them, not subservience from 
the mother and queen to the children she nourished and 
protected. In the words of the head of the Church in 
England, ' It is not the State which establishes the Church, 
it is the Church which establishes the State.' 

" The barbaric tribes successively led under the Church's 
sway were providential agents in bringing about that glori- 
ous dawn of Church supremacy, the mediaeval theocracy. 
But unavoidable defects attended that development. Vast 
numbers of the indifferent, the gross, the merely credulous, 
and the worldly, were led within the Church's fold by 
circumstances, accepted its doctrines unhesitatingly but 



H4 Contemporary Evolution. 

unprofitably, since in them * works ' did not accompany 
' faith/ and belief without charity, as Dr. Newman has so 
well shown, leads directly to superstition. 

" The Christian mediaeval system culminated in as near 
an approach to a universal theocracy as was then possible ; 
but the world was manifestly quite unripe for a more 
perfectly developed condition, with (as we now know) its 
far larger area unchristianised, more than half undis- 
covered, and with a vast mass of latent paganism in the 
part which was externally Christianised. 

"A great process of differentation and division of labour 
had necessarily to be gone through. For the perfection 
of society, philosophy, politics, science, and art, had to 
become the exclusive occupation of different minds, instead 
of remaining in the hands of the clergy, whose proper 
study is theology. These fields of activity could not be 
adequately cultivated without the devotion of many minds 
entirely and exclusively to one or other of them. Had 
Christians, especially those highly placed, been thoroughly 
imbued with the spirit of their religion, no doubt the ne- 
cessary transformations might have taken place peacefully 
and without religious disruption, but the essentially papal 
character of the Church was not fully recognised, nor was 
it then experimentally known how by separation from the 
centre of spiritual life the supply of vital force is there- 
by necessarily cut off. The pagan principle of State 
supremacy, once effectually introduced, ran its logical and 






Three Ideals. 115 



inevitable course fatally to the mediaeval theocracy and the 
social system therewith connected. Providentially accom- 
panying this movement has gone on a gradual perfecting 
of the Church's independent organism, and a greater and 
greater detachment of it from the State. 

"The Church has willingly lent its support to the 
secular power, which, . in return, has either sought per- 
fidiously to bind it in golden chains, or has brutally 
spurned it, as now in Germany. This fortunate perfidy 
will enable the Church to escape the popular enmity 
which the State is sure, sooner or later, to incur, while 
its perfect organisation will enable it to survive and 
flourish the better for the pseudo-Christian State's down- 
fall and replacement by a system of natural freedom for 
each individual citizen. 

"This process of reinvigoration is already becoming 
patent Since the clearly logical and Christian declara- 
tions of Boniface VI 1 1., no pontiff has so uncompromis- 
ingly asserted the Church's claims as Pius IX. 

" The completion of the anti-mediaeval movement will 
only bring out yet more clearly what is but in effect and 
in other terms the proclamation and assertion of the 
supreme rights of conscience. But while the extent of- the 
Church's success in the thirteenth century should not be 
over-stated, so also there is no cause for discouragement 
in the apparent reverses it has since undergone. Whether 
under the anti-papal revolts of the sixteenth century, or 



1 1 6 Contemporary Evolution. 

the anti-Christian revolutions of the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth centuries, the same unvarying process of steadily 
increasing conquest has been, is, and will be incessantly 
going on, and this in spite of superficial appearances to 
the contrary. As to the first of these events (the sixteenth 
century revolt), the spread of the faith in the new world 
compensated for its restriction in the old, while its very 
restriction was the occasion of the more complete develop- 
ment of the faith in the area v/hich retained it, where it 
became more intensely and consciously held. As to the 
second event, its wonderfully invigorating actions on those 
who remain Christians in France, Italy, Switzerland, and 
Germany, is before our eyes to-day. 

" The manifest religious changes of the sixteenth century 
will ultimately turn out to have been really to the 
Church's advantage. Before then, the Church contained 
a mass of latent heresy and infidelity, while now the 
religious bodies external to the Church contain a mass of 
latent orthodoxy. 

" This is especially the case amongst English-speaking 
Christians. The noble anti-Erastian passion of the sturdy 
Puritans, and their honest zeal against what they believed 
to be idolatry, were essentially most Catholic, as was also 
the heartfelt piety of the evangelican protest against the 
cold formalism of the established clergy of that time. 
The marvellous growth of high church views has re- 
sulted in a forest of new spires, in schools, convents, and 



Three Ideals. 1 1 7 



pious institutions, far and wide in our land — proclaiming 
the deep and earnest nature of our religious progress. 
Even the very fanaticisms of ' sabbath observance ' and 
1 bibliolatry ' are replete with Catholic ascetic and devo- 
tional instincts, however misdirected. 

" In the Protestant masses of to-day is contained an 
immense body of latent Catholicism, like some chemical 
substance in solution, which but requires a sudden change 
of temperature or the introduction of some foreign body 
to precipitate itself, or become manifest in a conspicuous 
crystallisation. The number of those who have really 
understood the Church and rejected her is infinitesimal, 
and article after article, and book after book, again and 
again show how profoundly she is misapprehended, and 
how the mass of the hostility directed against her is really 
directed not against her, but against that to which she also 
is no less opposed. 

" Even the anarchic spirit of the \ Internationalists ' is 
in one respect really vivified by a profound Christian 
spirit — the spirit of cosmopolitanism. They clearly see 
that a man who would sacrifice the welfare of the world 
to that of his country is only one degree less selfish 
than the man who would sacrifice his country to aggran- 
dise his family. What was the very first step in the 
destruction of the Christian theocracy becomes thus con- 
demned and reprobated by the logical descendants of such 
destroyers as Philip the Fair and Henry the Eighth. 



1 1 8 Contemporary Evolution. 

" Of course that destructive action cannot be approved 
and can still less be aided by any sincere Christian. So 
to approve would be to repeat the error of De Lamennais. 
A separation of Church and State cannot be good save 
relatively through human perverseness. A union of 
Church and State is the natural and true ideal, and will 
spontaneously reappear (when once the world has been 
reconverted) through common consent But Christianity 
is forbidden to propagate itself by the sword. The 
children of those who have thrown off her yoke and 
who are becoming more and more literally pagans cannot, 
upon Church principles, be religiously coerced or called 
on to accept that which, on account of honest prejudice, 
their reason is really unable to embrace. The Church 
absolutely condemns "* the use of force when a nation has 
either not received or has once lost the faith. 

" But although the crew of Bismarcks, Garibaldis, and 
Victor Emmanuels may be regarded as obscene creatures 
of rapine, nevertheless, hyaenas and vultures have, after all, 
a useful and salutary function to execute, without their 
having any good intention in the acts they perform, or 
being a bit less unclean vultures and hysenas on account of 
the salutary nature of that function. 

"A continuous action of six hundred years has not been 
permitted without good cause, and the changes effected, 

* " Ad ccelum homines trahendos esse, non cogendos." — Brevia?y 
Office for St. Augustine of Canterbury. 



Three Ideals. 1 1 9 



however iniquitously brought about, have been provi- 
dentially allowed and overruled for the full development 
of the Church in all its glory through the manifestation 
of its action in a world of full civic freedom. 

" The pagan movement, which made fts way by assert- 
ing and proclaiming freedom, is ending in an attempt at 
the most extreme and debasing of despotisms. 

"The Christian movement, which progressed through 
strong assertion of authority, is ending, as it logically 
should do from its principles, in being the great supporter 
of individual freedom reposing upon conscience — ' rights ' 
answering to ' duties/ 

"The long process of Christian integration having, in 
the Vatican Council, culminated in the complete organisa- 
tion of supreme authority, the liberty of the individual 
regains full play — the restraint of conscientious fears as 
to possible ill effects of his utterances being removed by 
the recognition of a ready and infallible authority capable 
of rendering his well-meant but mistaken efforts harmless. 
Similarly, the whole hierarchical system of subordinate 
authority, down to the private confessor, being fully estab- 
lished, and the whole controlling agency necessary for the 
Church's stability having been completed, a freer play may 
be given to individual energies than for the centuries past 
during which that agency was developing and perfecting. 
If before, the energies and activities of Churchmen were 
unequal to those of their opponents, this relation will 



i 20 Contemporary Evolution. 

speedily be reversed, as Switzerland and Germany are 
beginning to show us. The missions of the Greeks and 
Latins with regard to the Church being mainly fulfilled, 
the vigorous Teutonic race has now to promote its peaceful 
triumph through individual energy in the arena of civic 
freedom. 

"Judging then of the future by the past, changes to 
come will but bring out more and more the Church's true 
nature by gathering in the latent Catholicity of separated 
bodies, and by slougliing off such unworthy members as 
have, in the past, been retained in it by sloth, ignorance, 
or interest. It will thus necessarily become more and 
more conspicuous for the holiness of its members as com- 
pared with such of the population as is avowedly pagan 
and unbelieving. As the process of evolution has gone 
on from the inorganic world to the organic, from the 
vegetable to the animal, and from the simplest form of 
sentient life, through constantly increasing complexity, 
till the hour struck for the introduction of a rational 
animal into the world, so the evolution of humanity has 
proceeded, and is proceeding, from direct and simple 
conscious apprehensions to more and more reflex, self- 
conscious, and complex comprehensions. And this applies 
fully to the acceptance of the Christian Church. As it 
has been, so it will be. Of time there is no stint. The 
next glacial epoch is sufficiently remote. By the con- 
tinuance, then, of this evolutionary process there is to be 



Three Ideals. 121 



plainly discerned in the distant future a triumph of the 
Church compared with which that of mediaeval Christen- 
dom was but a transient adumbration. A triumph brought 
about by moral means alone — by the slow process of ex- 
hortation, example, and individual conviction, after every 
error has been freely propagated, every denial freely made, 
and every rival system provided with a free field for its 
display. A triumph infinitely more glorious than any 
brought about by the sword, and fulfilling at last the old 
pre-Christian prophecies of the kingdom of God upon 
earth." 

Such, perhaps, might be the Churchman's reply as to 
the position and prospects of Christianity, to those 
who oppose to him the phenomena of the last six cen- 
turies' change. Here it has been endeavoured dispassion- 
ately to estimate what, at the very utmost, must be the 
destructive effects on Christianity of the greatest amount 
of anti-theocratic change which can possibly be antici- 
pated, and the answer has been that there is no reason to 
apprehend even its enfeeblement, still less its annihila- 
tion. 

Nevertheless, we have yet but considered the political 
aspect of the great modern anti-mediaeval movement. 
The scientific and, most important of all, the philosophic 
aspects of that movement remain to be considered. We 
may conclude that the political changes will be harmless 



122 Conte7nporary Evolution. 

to the Church, but it will manifestly be quite otherwise 
if either science or philosophy contradicts its dogmas. 

Whatever the effect, however, one thing is certain — that 
science will address itself with greater and greater power 
to a constantly increasing circle of auditors, and will 
command an increasing number of cultivators and experts ; 
and it is to be hoped that the same may be said also of 
philosophy. 

If, then, either scientific and philosophic evolution is 
hostile to Christianity, the progress of such evolution must 
be fatal to it, and political evolution, by giving them 
increased liberty, must hasten their fatal effect. To these 
aspects of evolution then we must next address ourselves. 

NOTE. 

Some months after the above passage was first published, the 
views and expectations expressed in it were, remarkably confirmed 
by three articles which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, in the 
numbers for December the 24th and 29th, 1874, and January 14th, 
1875, respectively. From these articles the following passages may 
be cited : — 

" Democracy and the Roman Catholic Church." 

" Whether Monsignor Meglia did or did not say that, except in 
America, Belgium, and England, the Revolution was the only means 
by which the Roman Catholic Church could hope to recover her 
lost liberties, the idea is one which must at times present itself to 
the minds of the younger school of ecclesiastics. A new pope may 
acquiesce in, if he does not originate, a radical change of policy, 
and the next vacancy in the chair of Peter may hereafter be looked 
back to as the starting-point of a new fight for spiritual supremacy 



Three Ideals. 123 



on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. It is plain to outside 
observers, whatever it may be to the Roman curia, that the old 
allies of the Church are no longer of any use to her. Kings and 
aristocracies are now only accidentally powerful. They succeed in 
so far as they interpret and adopt the great currents of popular 
sentiment. They fail whenever they try to maintain or bring back 
the system which since the French Revolution has everywhere been 
struck with incurable decay. Kingly support and court influence 
can now do but little even for those who can command them. Nor 
is it by any means certain that even if their hold upon the world 
were restored to them they would be disposed to exert it in favour 
of the Church. Courts and aristocracies naturally embody the ideas 
of the educated classes for the time being, and one great cause of 
the recent defeats of the Roman Catholic Church has been the 
general spread of irreligion, using the word in its most general 
sense, among the educated classes throughout Europe. The number 
of persons who disbelieve the Christian dogmas is probably greater 
than at any former time, and .what is even more important to the 
matter in hand, it is becoming less and less fashionable to conceal 
their disbelief. Kings and nobles are no more proof against this 
tendency than other educated men, and in so far as they are in- 
fluenced by it they would not be disposed to help the Church to 
regain her lost empire, even if they had power to do so. Indeed, 
in the improbable contingency of this power returning to them, they 
would almost certainly shrink from exercising it from their desire 
not to share in the unpopularity of the Church. If the Comte de 
Chambord were to become king of France, the first request his lay 
advisers would address to him would be to shake himself free from 
the priests. When the Roman Catholic Church awakes to the fact 
that those on whom it has so long leaned have neither their old 
strength nor their old willingness to use it for ecclesiastical objects, 
it cannot fail to see that it has only two alternatives to choose 
between. It must throw up the battle altogether, or it must seek 
for new alliances among those who have solid support to give. 

" At first sight it must be admitted the prospect appears gloomy 
enough. All over Europe ' the Revolution ' and hatred of the 



124 Contemporary Evolution. 

Church are almost convertible terms. In France and Italy the 
democracy is only kept from slaughtering the clergy in cold blood 
by the fear of legal or military consequences. There are thousands 
of workmen in Paris to whom the murder of the Archbishop of 
Paris only suggests a regret that he was not shot for being a 
priest instead of being shot as a hostage, and this feeling is repro- 
duced with more or less accuracy in every large town on the Con- 
tinent. There is very little of this sort of fanaticism in England ; 
but even here, if Mr. Bradlaugh had his will, the priests might 
have a bad time. It is to a democracy largely subject to these 
influences that the Church must make its appeal. But this hatred 
of the Church in the minds of the working classes is only partially 
due to the cause which *has generated a modified form of the same 
feeling in the minds of the educated classes. Disbelief in its coarser 
shapes no doubt prevails among them to a very great extent, but 
even this disbelief has probably a polilical rather than an intellectual 
origin. They disbelieve because they hate, rather than hate because 
they disbelieve. The main cause of democratic antagonism to the 
Roman Catholic Church has been its alliance for so many centuries 
with those whom the democracy regards as its oppressors. In every 
struggle the Church has been on the side of the powers that be. It has 
not only become associated by this means with the unpopularity which 
attaches to these powers, it has even attracted the largest share of 
it to its own shoulders. The Church was hated in the first instance 
because it supported the privileged classes, and one of the principal 
reasons why the privileged classes are now hated is that they are 
suspected of wishing well to the Church. 

" Now the change of policy foreshadowed in the speech attributed 
to Monsignor Meglia would strike at the root of the hatred felt by 
democrats towards the Church. The accumulated detestation of 
centuries would remain, but no fresh additions would be .made to 
the store. And when the source of supply is cut off, it is remark- 
able how soon a feeling of this kind begins to decay. The recol- 
lections of past wrongs grow faint in the light of present services. 
The political tendencies now in action will help on this process of 
oblivion. The French noblesse under Louis XVI. had for the most 



Three Ideals. 125 



part ceased to oppress the poor, but they retained the property 
which had been the visible symbol of oppression, and they suffered 
not so much for what they did as for what they had. The drift of 
contemporary legislation promises to set the Church entirely free 
from a similar danger. She will no longer wear the livery of the 
secular powers from whom she has parted company. There will be 
nothing in her aspect to remind her enemies of her ancient wealth 
or of her ancient grandeur. Besides this, the foe from whom she 
has most to fear is certain to make itself many adversaries, and 
every one of these adversaries will be a possible ally of the Church. 
The form of despotism which is most in favour at present, and 
most likely to become stronger in the immediate future, is the 
despotism of a highly centralised State. Communities surrender 
their freedom in return for unity and strength at home, and pres- 
tige abroad. For a time all goes on smoothly, and the subjects of 
the State are never tired of contemplating the system which they 
have themselves helped to build up. By-and-by these very same 
people begin to feel oppressed by their own creation. Resisting 
minorities start up in all directions ; and the more resolutely they 
are put down, the more disposed they are to make common cause 
with all who share their slavery and their desire for emancipation. 
The Roman Catholic Church will have singular advantages in deal- 
ing with this temper. Its soldiers will have nothing to lose. If 
they die in the conflict, they leave no children to suffer from the 
loss of a father. Wherever their services are needed a subsistence 
is secured to them, and the enthusiasm which springs up in the 
field soon learns to desire nothing more. Under changed names 
and new conditions the Church will once more appear on the side 
of the weak against the strong, of the poor against the rich, of 
individual liberty against a tyrannical system. These are strong 
titles to democratic support, and though the sympathies of the 
democracy are at present on the side of the State, which they hope 
hereafter to mould at their pleasure, against the Church, which they 
cannot mould at all, the situation may undergo a radical change if 
the State becomes the inflexible and the Church the most flexible 
element in modern society. 



126 Contemporary Evolution. 

" It has always been found that causes which have an emotional 
basis attract a far greater number of supporters and exercise a 
much firmer hold over them than causes which have only a basis 
of reason. So long as slavery in the United States was combated 
on economical or political grounds, its defenders had no reason to 
fear the attack. If they were unable to answer the arguments 
brought against them, they could comfort themselves by thinking 
that it did not matter whether they were answered or not. But 
when the abolitionist party lifted the question into the sphere of 
emotion, and denounced slavery and the constitution which per- 
mitted slavery on the plea of owing obedience to a higher law than 
any of man's making, the whole character of the controversy was 
altered, and slavery was doomed just when its strength seemed 
greatest. There is no organisation which can command emotion 
with so much certainty of evoking it as the Roman Catholic Church, 
and of all emotions the religious emotion is the strongest when 
thoroughly aroused. 

" We have already indicated one or two of the grounds which make 
it probable that the present attitude of the Roman Catholic Church 
towards democracy will hereafter be completely changed. Some 
others still remain to be mentioned. In modern times — ever since, 
that is, the existing State system of Europe began to grow up— the 
Roman Catholic Church has been the most conservative of all 
institutions. But to suppose that it must remain what it is when 
the reasons for being what it is are at an end would be to underrate 
the ability which ecclesiastics have at various times displayed, and 
may very possibly display again. 

" Supposing the Roman Catholic clergy to be convinced that their 
best if not their only chance of regaining their spiritual influence 
lies in an appeal to the democracy, their organisation and position 
would give them many advantages in making it. Their singular 
detachment from those family ties which make men fearful of running 
great risks has already been referred to. Their detachment from 
local ties would enable them to pursue a uniform policy in different 
countries and under different circumstances. In some cases they 
would be connected by birth with the classes whose temper they 



Three Ideals. 127 



would have to study, and whose interests they would have to further. 
The example of Ireland may serve to show how intensely popular a 
clergy sprung from the people can become under favourable con- 
ditions. It seems probable that the Roman Catholic clergy will be 
more and more recruited from two sources — the lower classes, among 
whom traditional belief is still strong, and those of the upper classes 
who dislike the political system under*' which they live, and will con- 
sequently take orders with the desire to injure it in every way that 
presents itself. An appeal to the democracy will commend itself on 
different grounds to both these groups. With the first it will be 
instinctive ; with the second it will be the result of calculation. It 
will not be enough, however, for the clergy to be convinced that the 
interest of the Church suggests an appeal to the democracy. The 
fact that you have an obvious motive for offering your services to a 
man with whom you have hitherto been on bad terms is apt to make 
him the less inclined to listen. Nor will it be enough for the clergy 
to be possessed of an organisation which will give them many 
advantages in making such an appeal. This, too, may only serve 
to put the democracy on their guard. Besides both these qualifica- 
tions, there is wanted an enthusiasm on the part of the clergy which 
shall carry them over the hostility, the coldness, the suspicions with 
which their overtures are certain to be received in the first instance. 
Is there anything in the character or history of the Roman Catholic 
Church which is calculated to arouse this enthusiasm in its mem- 
bers ? 

" To answer this question fully would be to survey the whole field 
of ecclesiastical history. But, to note one or two only of the many 
points which suggest themselves, there is in the first place the 
essentially democratic origin of the Church. Whenever a Roman 
Catholic priest stands before the altar or mounts the pulpit, there 
hangs opposite to him the crucified form of One who was born in a 
stable, who gvew to manhood in a carpenter's shed, whose chosen 
associates w/,*e poor men gaining a precarious livelihood by fishing, 
who wande-.sd about without a roof to shelter Him, who was in 
constant conflict with all the traditional and accepted authorities of 
r ii*-. 'm.tfoA, and w T ho finally suffered death at their hands. What 



128 Contemporary Evolution. 

associations can be more likely to suggest democratic ideas to 
enthusiastic minds sprung, it may be, from poor parents, and them- 
selves waging a continual warfare with the secular powers ? The 
religion thus founded was the heir of an older faith which in its 
noblest development was an eminent protest against arrogance and 
oppression. ' Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl/ though it 
occurs in an apostolic epistle, reproduces exactly the spirit of the 
Hebrew prophets. St. Paul's teaching lends itself to a similar 
application. A great orator who had persuaded himself that the 
success of his preaching depended on his carrying the multitude 
with him would hardly desire a better text than ' God hath chosen the 
weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty ; 
and base things of the world, and things which are despised, yea, 
and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.' At 
present he would be hampered in handling his subject. He is not on 
the whole desirous of disturbing the existing order of secular affairs, 
and he would therefore have to explain that St. PauPs words were to 
be taken in a strictly spiritual sense. But assume him to have 
become a declared enemy of the existing order of secular affairs, and 
so to be emancipated from the restrictions which now fetter his 
eloquence, .and he will have a vantage-ground from which to move 
democratic passion such as no merely secularist preacher is likely to 
share. The clergy need not even go so far back as the origin of their 
religion. The history of its youth and manhood is full of associations 
which point in the same direction. The glory of the mediaeval 
Church is the resistance which it offered to tyranny of every kind. 
The typical bishop of those times is always upholding a righteous 
cause against kings and emperors, or exhorting masters to let their 
slaves go free, or giving sanctuary to harassed fugitives, or protecting 
the infant town against some neighbouring feudal lord, or inspiring 
the villagers whom their lord has deserted to make head against 
a piratical inroad, or joining with the better disposed barons in setting 
bounds to kingly aggression. What is true of the bishops is true in 
a still more eminent degree of the religious orders. Whether they 
aimed at guiding men by putting wealth to noble uses, or by 
neglecting it altogether, their object was equally to identify them- 



Three Ideals. 129 



selves with the poor. They are not likely soon to have another 
opportunity of playing the former part, but the occasions for the 
latter can never be denied them. If to belong to a religious order 
were made a capital offence in every country in Europe, it would 
not prevent the formation of secret societies, whose sole external 
symbol would be the greater readiness of their members to spend 
their substance upon others rather than upon themselves. There is 
enough in these considerations to excite enthusiasm, provided that 
other conditions are favourable. In appealing to the democracy, the 
Roman Catholic clergy would, in form at least, be reviving the best 
traditions of the Church. There will be nothing strange in their 
persuading themselves that power may be best recovered by boldly 
resorting to the methods which originally gained it. 

"We certainly do not look forward to any incongruous alliance 
between the Roman Catholic Church and the Reds. To the extreme 
revolutionary party on the continent politics have become a religion, 
and the cardinal articles of that religion are probably held with as 
much fanaticism as can be commanded by the Roman Catholic 
Church itself. Supposing the Church to take the line we have indi- 
cated, we should rather regard it as a rival power bidding against 
the Reds for the friendship of the poorer, classes of society, The 
Church would offer them equal sympathy, alloyed with less of that 
desire for personal aggrandisement which the poor are so ready to 
attribute to leaders of their own class. It would be quite as little 
hampered by any stereotyped reverence for economical laws. Ordinary 
politicians are disturbed if they become convinced that a particular 
line of action is opposed to the growth of capital. They are so 
accustomed to associate the well-being of a nation with its material 
progress, that a state of things which does not further the latter can 
hardly in their eyes tend to further the former. The Red Republican 
has emancipated himself from this tendency to link together the two 
ideas, and the genuine ecclesiastic has never been subject to it. For 
different reasons capital is scarcely less hateful to the one than to 
the other, and we are not at. all sure that the doctrine that property 
is a trust held for the benefit of the poor may not prove as attractive 
to the cestuique trust as the rival doctrine that property is only 



130 Contemporary Evolution. 

legitimate when it has been distributed among the poor. Be this as 
it may, this is the attitude which we have supposed the Roman 
Catholic Church to take up — not striving to win over, or fancying 
that it can win over, the Reds, but offering to that great mass of poor 
men and women who are as yet neither Reds nor Catholics in any 
very definite sense, a creed as full of sympathy for their sufferings and 
on the whole less tied down to promises which those who make them 
cannot perform. We do not deny that the view which says, 'Why 
should we resign ourselves to the endurance of evils for which we 
shall never get any compensation V has many attractions for energetic 
spirits, and at times when resignation is not the only course open. 
But in the long run it has always been found that sufferings and in- 
justices are not removed by a resolution not to submit to them ; and 
whenever this discovery is made, there will always be a chance for 
the view which preaches submission to inevitable evils in the belief 
that they will be redressed hereafter." 



CHAPTER IV. 

SCIENTIFIC EVOLUTION. 

T N the second chapter of this essay, an attempt was 
A made to investigate the probable effect on Christianity 
of the further development of the great modern process of 
social evolution. It was therein stated that a trustworthy 
result could be arrived at only after considering (i) the 
political, (2) the scientific, and (3) the philosophic aspects of 
the question. As yet our inquiry has been limited to the 
political aspect alone, the others being deferred for sub- 
sequent consideration. The result so far arrived at has 
been that the political evolutionary process tends to 
increase the coherence and strength of the Christian 
organism, and to give greater efficiency to its action, by 
occasioning a series of internal integrating processes re- 
sponsive to external disintegrating influences. Neverthe- 
less a reservation was made as to the possible effects of 
scientific and philosophic evolution, to the effect that if 
contradiction thence arose such evolution must be fatal, 
while political change (by giving increased liberty of 
action) must hasten the final catastrophe. It remains 
then to consider the scientific and philosophic aspects of 
contemporary evolution in their relationship to Christian- 
ity, the subject being treated now, as in the preceding 



132 Contemporary Evolution. 

chapters, altogether without reference to the truth of that 
religion, and from the standpoint of natural science 
only. 

The accelerated advance of physical science is the 
"commonplace" of our day. That it will address itself 
with augmenting power to increasing audiences is certain. 
Not less certain is it that, as before pointed out, theo- 
logical questions are more and more calling forth zeal 
and energy in regions where a quarter of a century ago 
apathy and stagnaticm largely prevailed. Manifest, again, 
to the most cursory observer is the wide divergence of 
views and sentiments between large numbers of those 
more especially devoted to one or the other of these fields 
of activity. In the first chapter it was sought to pourtray 
and symbolise this divergence as concretely embodied in 
a mediaeval abbey and a modern museum. How marked 
such divergence appears to the average middle-class mind 
in England to-day is evidenced by the contrast drawn 
by the Times between the British pilgrimage to Paray-le- 
Monial and the succeeding British Association meeting. 
It was evident that, in the writer's opinion, there would 
be more or less inconsistency in any one taking part 
with full sympathy in both those gatherings. 

To those who think that such divergence cf sentiment 
has its foundation in the intellect and is the expression of 
a real and necessary rational divergence, the effect of the 
further progress of evolution cannot be doubtful. Those 



Scientific Evolution. 133 

thinkers will also naturally desire the complete and final 
overthrow of a superstition clogging the wheels of scientific 
progress, and will justly be moved to discourage (in all 
ways not conflicting with the equal rights of their fellow- 
citizens to liberty of conscience) a system they deem to be 
in contradiction with reason. On the other hand, there 
are those who are convinced that this divergence is not 
fundamentally a rational one at all, but, except where 
volition intervenes, the result of feebleness of imagination, 
absence of due mental flexibility, or simply of ignorance or 
prejudice. The author of this essay can at least testify 
that he has met with several, in many respects highly- 
gifted minds, who have had personal experience of this 
relative impotency, and who have only after many efforts, 
and sometimes wide oscillations, succeeded in effecting the 
mental synthesis referred to. 

Yet the conflict at present existing between the two 
schools of thought is, as was earlier pointed out, the result 
of a gradual and steady growth through preceding cen- 
turies, and is, whatever be the result, likely for a time yet 
further to become intensified, from two special causes. One 
of these (1) is the action of the principle of the division of 
labour. The other (2) is the special character of some 
physical science teaching. The principle of the division of 
labour renders necessary the application of one man's 
almost entire energy to a more and more restricted field 
of scientific labour. Only intellectual giants can now 



134 Contemporary Evolution. 

hope for eminence in widely remote areas of study and 
research. To take an example from one science, men 
have not only almost ceased to be general zoologists, and 
become ornithologists, entomologists, &c, as the case may 
be ; but we hear now of lives being devoted to the study 
of small sections of natural orders, and that this naturalist 
is a Carabidisly* and that a Curculionist,^ while a German 
naturalist has even published a quarto volume, with large 
plates and numerous tables, the whole being devoted to 
the anatomy of the* lower part of the hindmost bone of 
the skull of the carp ! 

Now physical science must continue, not only to grow 
in complexity as well as mass, but also to diffuse itself 
over an increasing area. The general diffusion of 
modern instruction will hereafter render a certain ac- 
quaintance with the facts and most approved theories 
of science the common property of all who have the 
least pretension to be deemed " educated," and influ- 
ences as yet active, but in a very limited field, must 
sooner or later become all but universal. At the same 
time the clergy, diminished in relative number through 
the consequences of the Renaissance movement, will come 
to have less and less time to spare for any special acqui- 
sitions in physical science, and far from monopolising the 
physical knowledge of their time (as was the case in the 

# i.e., devoted to that family of beetles termed Carabidce. 
f i.e., devoted to the long-snouted beetles termed Curat lionidce. 



Scientific Evolution. 135 

early part of the Middle Ages), they must have even less 
and less chance of often occupying distinguished positions 
in the scientific arena, such as those filled by numerous 
continental abbes before the epoch of the great French 
Revolution. Besides relative numerical decrease in the 
clergy and the increasing sub-division of the field of 
physical science labour just spoken of, a simultaneous 
growth in theological science must render the attainment 
of eminence in any one of the more and more restricted 
branches of physical science still more difficult, and all but 
a matter of impossibility to a clergy devoted to a theology 
which, whether true or false, is also ever increasing in com- 
plexity as well as mass by a development responsive to the 
actions of surrounding influences. Thus it appears to be 
inevitable that as time goes on we shall come to have a 
population more and more imbued with physical science, 
and at the same time a clergy less and less raised above the 
mass of the laity as regards a knowledge of such science. 
These conditions, accompanying as they will a growing 
appreciation of physical science, must favour the already 
wide-spread belief in a real antagonism of reason between 
science and Christianity. The mere existence of such a 
belief (coinciding as it does, with anti-Christian tendencies 
which it helps to intensify) cannot but produce results, 
temporarily, at least, very hurtful to the Christian or- 
ganism, since it tends altogether to divert from the 
examination of the Church's claims inquiring minds 



136 Contemporary Evolution. 

which otherwise might perhaps find her acceptable to 
their mental states, and to destroy the belief of others 
who, from a very distinct cause, may be specially sus- 
ceptible to such influence. Hence there seems but little 
reason to expect that the existing wide-spread connection 
between familiarity with physical science and disbelief in 
Christianity will, for a considerable period, diminish — to 
anticipate, that is, that a movement which has been 
gradually growing in strength for six hundred years is 
likely soon to be .arrested. So far, then, the scientific 
aspect of contemporary evolution appears hostile to the 
growth and influence of the Church. Yet we may find 
hereafter (when we have considered the second cause) 
compensating actions leading to results quite opposite to 
those which have as yet appeared. 

The second cause of hostility was stated to be "the 
special character of some physical science teaching." 

Physical science occupies itself with the phenomenal 
universe as far as accessible to our senses, the collocations 
of causes in the visible world, together with the laws of 
their action — in short, with the co-existences and suc- 
cessions of phenomena, from mathematics and sidereal 
astronomy to biology and sociology.* 

* Mr. G. H. Lewes (" Problems of Life and Mind ") professes to 
embrace "metaphysics" within the range of science. He does so, 
however, merely by calling " metaphysical " certain physical concep- 
tions by which phenomena are mentally connected in scientific minds, 



Scientific EvohUion. 137 

Theology occupies itself with an asserted noumenal 
universe, inaccessible to our senses, the collocation of 
causes in such an invisible world, together with the laws 
of their action— in short, with the relations of spiritual 
entities from God down to the human soul. 

Such being the case— the two domains being so distinct 
— it seems difficult to conceive how any development of 
physical science can possibly conflict with natural 
theology, and yet the fact is patent that it is very 
often supposed to do so. It is true, of course, that 
Christian theology does make a limited number of 
assertions with respect to certain facts (such, e.g., as those 
contained in the Church's creed), which were at one 
time subjects of sensible experience. It is manifest, 
therefore, that if science, e.g., history, could demonstrate 
any one of these assertions to be false, such science 
must be not merely hostile but deadly in its action 
on Christianity. No writer, however, as yet has even 
claimed to have established a demonstration of the kind. 
Indeed, all competent minds have recognised the fact 
that physical science, apart from a priori philosophical 
conceptions, must be alike incapable of disproving them 
or of establishing their impossibility. Nevertheless, there 
are always more or less widely diffused among Christians 
various " pious opinions " (as they are termed), which 

and by bestowing the new name " metempirics " on that which has 
been hitherto universally called " metaphysics." 

7 



138 Contemporary Evolution. 

are often held with great tenacity, although forming no 
part of what the Church affirms as divinely revealed. 
This it is which is the region of conflict, and it is strewn 
over with weapons more or less hastily caught up by 
assailants as possessing a fatal efficiency and afterwards 
abandoned in disappointment. Not that the weapons 
were pointless or their wielders unskilful, but that by 
the destruction of an encumbering delusion they conferred 
benefits on the cause which was the real object of their 
attack. In England, both the assailants and the sup- 
porters of popular Christianity are peculiarly liable to 
become involved in such contests. They are thus liable 
because of the often startling ignorance of Christian 
dogma amongst the former, and the prevalence of a 
certain peculiar superstition amongst the latter. This 
superstition is the somewhat grotesque belief that the ever 
freshly surging questions of theology — presenting them- 
selves in new aspects in each succeeding age — are to be 
answered by revelation indeed, but through a printed 
book, and not through some living authority capable of 
addressing to each succeeding epoch its specially fitting 
response. Nevertheless, not in England alone, but 
throughout the civilised world, such conflicts have raged 
from time to time, and two noteworthy ones may be here 
suitably adverted to. 

It is not probable that physical science will again be 
the occasion of so great a disturbance to prevalent " pious 



Scientific Evolution. 139 

beliefs" as when it first introduced heliocentric as- 
tronomy to the Christian world.* The primitive cosmo- 



* On this subject Dr. Newman observes : — " When the Copernican 
system first made progress, what religious man would not have been 
tempted to uneasiness, or at least fear of scandal, from the seeming 
contradiction which it involved to some authoritative tradition of the 
Church and the declaration of Scripture ? It was generally received, 
as if the apostles had expressly delivered it, both orally and in writing, 
that the earth was stationary, and that the sun was fixed in a solid 
firmament which whirled round the earth. After a little time, how- 
ever, and on full consideration, it was found that the Church had 
decided next to nothing on questions such as these, and that physical 
science might range in this sphere of thought almost at will, without 
fear of encountering the decisions of ecclesiastical authority. Now, 
besides the relief which it afforded to Catholics to find that they were 
to be spared this addition, on the side of cosmology, to their many 
controversies already existing, there is something of an argument in 
this circumstance in behalf of the divinity of their religion. For it 
surely is a very remarkable fact, considering how widely and how 
long one certain interpretation of these physical statements in Scrip- 
ture had been received by Catholics, that the Church should not have 
formally acknowledged it. Looking at the matter in a human point 
of view, it was inevitable that she should have made that opinion her 
own. But now we find, on ascertaining where we stand, in the face 
of the new sciences of these latter times, that, in spite of the bountiful 
comments, which from the first she has ever been making on the 
sacred text, as it is her duty and her right to do, nevertheless she has 
never been led formally to explain the texts in question, or to give 
them an authoritative sense which modern science may question. Nor 
was this escape a mere accident, or what will more religiously be 
called a providential event, as is shown by a passage of history in the 
Dark Age itself. When the glorious St. Boniface, Apostle of Germany, 
great in sanctity, though not in secular knowledge, complained to the 
Holy See that St. Virgilius taught the existence of the antipodes, the 



140 Contemporary Evolution. 

logical conception had in its favour alike the convictions 
of the majority of the learned, the language of books 
revered as sacred, and the enormous force of a habit of 
mind unbroken for untold ages. Yet the result of the 
universal acceptance of the new astronomy, so far from 
destroying the Christian Church (as it is asserted it would 
have destroyed Hindooism), has been to show that it 
was in fact prepared beforehand for the greatest change 
of cosmological conception which the world has yet 
seen. 

The second instance is that of the apparent conflict 
between evolutionary biology and Christian dogma, and 
indeed, no better test question as to the effect of scientific 
progress on Christianity could well be devised. The 
general acceptance, till modern times, of one special view 
of creative action, together with the unhesitating consent 
of almost all men of science as to the indefinite durability 
of specific characters, made it in the highest degree un- 
likely that authoritative Christian teaching, in early 
mediaeval times, should have laid down principles render- 
ing the assimilation of evolutionary natural history by 

Holy See apparently evaded the question, not indeed siding with the 
Irish philosopher, which would have been going out of its place, but 
passing over in a manner not revealed a philosophical opinion" 
(Lectures on University Subjects, p. 279). With how much, even 
greater force do not these remarks apply to the Church's action 
respecting belief as to the mode of creation of animal and vegetable 
forms. 



1 



Scientific Evolution. 141 

theology not only possible but easy and natural. Never- 
theless; it has been shown* that such assimilation is 
thus easy and natural, and so far as the present writer is 
aware, not even an attempt at a reply has yet been made 
to the statements and reasonings there brought forward. 
Christians may surely be pardoned if they consider this 
a proof case, and assert that the religion that has borne 
this strain will bear any that physical science can bring 
to bear upon it. It might also be similarly shown that 
various other scientific questions (by some supposed to 
have a tendency conflicting with Christian dogma) — such 
as the antiquity of man, the phenomena of savage life, 
the necessity of nervous action to human thought, etc.— 
are beside the question, are indifferent matters in this 
relation, and necessarily futile as a basis of attack on the 
Church, and that, of course, whether the Church's claims 
be well or ill founded. On the other hand, it would not 
be difficult to show that there is a tendency in modern 
science — notably in biology — to direct men's minds in 
the opposite direction. That is to say, to direct them 
towards conceptions once generally current,*}- but which 
have, during the last three centuries, gradually passed 



* Co?ite?nporary Review, January, 1872, and the last chapter of 
"Lessons from Nature" (Murray, 1876). 

f This is particularly striking in Mr. Lewes's " Problems of Life 
and Mind," although reference thereto will come better under the 
head of philosophic than of scientific evolution. 



142 Contemporary Evolution. 

out of general consciousness and become " forgotten " 
rather than " rejected." 

Such being the relations existing between Christianity 
and physical science, What it may be asked, can be the 
peculiar character of science teaching which tends to 
prolong the hostility which has so long occupied us ? 

Shortly : then, it is not the science teaching itself, it is 
the metaphysics which consciously or unconsciously happen 
so often to have been propagated with it. In considering 
the teaching of physical science, two very different things 
require to be well distinguished : (1) the facts as to the 
co-existences and sequences of phenomena ; and (2) the 
special system of philosophy which such facts may be 
made use of to inculcate. 

Physical science, being by its very nature occupied ex- 
clusively with phenomenal conceptions, must plainly be 
capable of adaptation to, or explanation by, more than 
one system of philosophy ; and that it is so experience 
proves. The Berkeleyan, the Kantist, the peripatetic, and 
the materialist find no difficulty in presenting the facts of 
science in harmony with their respective views. We have 
seen that physical science itself must be simply indifferent 
as regards Christianity, but the very reverse is of course 
the case with the materialistic or pantheistic philosophical 
systems so often associated with it. The existence of such 
association is notorious, and the names of Vogt and Biich- 
ner may well be quoted as prominent inculcators of such 



Scientific Evolution. 143 

teaching. With loud professions of man's necessary ignor- 
ance is often joined a confident assertion as to the details 
of that course which would certainly be followed by a 
being of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, did such a 
being exist. 

For one of the latest examples of the spirit of this 
teaching we are indebted to Dr. Struther, who pro- 
pounded at Bradford an argument which has been* thus 
summarised : — " Because one or two individuals have died 
from the impactation of cherry-stones in the appendix 
vermiformis, therefore there is no God." We have no 
evidence of the possibility having occurred to that gentle- 
man that an indefinite number of final causes for the 
structure in question may (though unthought of by him) 
have preceded the existence of matter at all, and that 
amongst them might be the intellectual and moral effects 
of its contemplation on the minds of different men. 

The specimen cited is typical, because the religious 
doctrines directly and openly, or obliquely and covertly 
attacked in connection with the teaching referred to, are 
not those of Christianity specially, but of theism generally. 
The direction of attack has indeed greatly changed since 
the epoch of the " deists." It is now pretty generally 
admitted, with regard to " Christianity " and "theism" 
that arguments really telling against the first are in their 

* In Nature, Oct. 16, 1873, v °l» viii., No. 207, p. 509. 



144 Contemporary Evolution. 

logical consequences fatal also to the second, and that a 
Deus turns et remunerator once admitted, an antecedent 
probability for a revelation must be conceded. 

Examples of popular materialistic science teaching have 
been elsewhere given by the present writer, * and their 
tendencies pointed out. 

The teaching cited appeared capable of being summed 
up as follows : 

" I. Temporal happiness is the one rational aim of life. 

"II. A postive belief in God and a future life is an 
unwarrantable superstition. 

" III. Virtue and pleasure are synonymous, for in root 
and origin they are identical. 

" IV. Men are essentially but brutes, no differences of 
kind dividing them. 

"V. The Cause of all things has not personality, and 
consequently neither feeling, nor intelligence, nor will. 

"VI. All who pretend to teach religion are impostors 
or dupes. 

"VII. Our physical science teachers are the supreme 
exponents of truth, and the ultimate arbiters of all actions. 

"VIII. There is no such thing as real merit or demerit, 
as all our actions are absolutely determined for us, and free 
will is the most baseless of delusions." 

Amongst the most recent manifestations of scientific 

* See " Lessons from Nature" (Murray, 1876), chap, xiii., pp. 386- 
403. 



Scientific Evolution. 145 

materialism may be cited Professor Haeckel's History 
of Creation. 

Professor Haeckel is a very instructive writer, because 
his zeal for materialistic pantheism is so fiery that it 
hurries him sometimes into antitheistic deductions from sup- 
posed facts which later investigations prove to have been 
fictions (e.g., the supposed organism Bathybins Haeckelii, 
too probably but a sea mare's-nest, discovered by Professor 
Huxley, and appropriately named by him after his German 
alter ego), sometimes into a ludicrously exaggerated esti- 
mate of the philosophical or theological consequences of 
elementary truths ; e.g., those of development. 

This writer tells us (vol. i., p. 179) : "The soul of man, 
just as the soul of animals, is a purely mechanical activity, 
the sum of molecular phenomena of motion in the particles 
of the brain." Again he is translated as saying (p. 237) : 
" The widely spread dogma of the freedom of the will is 
from a scientific point of view altogether untenable ; every 
physiologist who scientifically investigates the activity of 
the will, must of necessity arrive at the conviction that 
in reality the will is never free, but is always determined 
by external or internal influences." 

The animus of the author and his freedom from 
prejudice in judging is made manifest by the praise 
he gives to Mr. Darwin's hypothesis for its antitheistic 
tendency, and by mentioning (p. 115) "as a special merit 
of Lamarck, that he endeavoured to prove the development 



146 Contemporary Evolution. 

of the human race from other primitive ape-like mam- 
mals." 

He speaks (p. 75) of the time "when man, first devel- 
oping out of the monkey state, began for the first time 
to think MORE closely (!) about himself, and about the 
origin of the world around him " ! It would be inter- 
esting to catch one of our monkeys in the Regent's 
Park thinking " loosely " about the origin of the world, 
and to photograph its aspect while so occupied. 

Very amusing, however, are Haeckel's remarks as to 
the wonderful results which are to follow a general ac- 
quaintance with the simple facts of human embryonic 
development, with which mysteries he naively imagines 
"speculative philosophers" and " theologians " are not 
acquainted. He tells us (p. 295), "These facts are not 
calculated to excite approval among those who assume 
a thorough difference between man and the rest of 
nature " ! Surely it is time that a man like Haeckel, 
who has done good service with respect to anatomical 
and zoological facts, should cease to give utterance to 
such mere enfantillage. 

The wonderful manner, however, in which his, mental 
vision is, not so much obscured as inverted, by prejudice 
(which we may hope is due rather to defective education 
than to bad will), is made unmistakably plain by the ioX- 
lowing passage from his " Generelle Morphologie der 
Organismen," vol. ii.> p. 436, in which he declares that 






Scientific Evolution. 147 

some brutes are the intellectual superiors of many men, 
in that they (the brutes) are not cramped in their 
mental action by dogmatic religious beliefs. His words 
are, speaking of Darwinian controversies : — 

" In dieser Frage stossen wir wiederum auf die heftigste 
Opposition gerade bei denjenigen Menschen, welche 
durch ihre unvollkommnere Verstandes — Entwickelung oft 
selbst hinter den hoheren Thieren zuruckbleiben. Dies 
gilt nicht allein von den niederen Menschen-Rassen, 
sondern auch von vielen Individuen der hochsten Rassen, 
und selbst von solchen, bei denen Man vermuthen sollte, 
dass die Masse erworbener Kenntnisse ihr Denkvermogen 
gescharft habe. Besonders interessant sind gerade in 
dieser Beziehung zahlreiche Aeusserungen von Gegnern 
der Descendenz-Theorie, welche oft in wahrhaft erstaun- 
licher Weise einen Mangel an naturlicher, klarer und 
scharfer Gedanken-Bildung und \ Gedanken-Verbindung 
bezeugen, der sie entschieden unter die verstandigeren 
Hunde, Pferde und Elephanten stellt. Da diese Thiere 
meistens nicht durch die alpenhohen Gebirgsketten von 
Dogmen und Vorurtheilen beschrankt werden, welche 
das Denken der meisten Menschen von Jugend an in 
schiefe Bahnen lenken, so finden wir bei ihnen nicht 
selten richtigere und natiirlichere Urtheile, als sie nament- 
lich bei den ' Gelehrten ' anzutrefYen sind." 

"As to this question, we have to contend against the 
most vehement opposition of those men who, by their 



148 Contemporary Evolution. 

imperfect intellectual development, often remain behind 
even the higher brutes. This is the case, not only with 
the lower, but also with many individuals of the highest 
order of human beings, and even with men whose wits we 
might have expected to find sharpened by the mass of 
their acquired knowledge. Especially interesting, in this 
relation, are the numerous utterances of anti-evolutionists, 
which often display in an astounding manner a want of 
aptitude for the clear and sharp formation and association 
of ideas ; by which* want they come to rank decidedly 
beneath the more intelligent dogs, horses, and elephants. 
For these animals, for the most part, are not hemmed in 
by Alpine summits of dogmas and prejudices, which lead 
the thought of most men, from youth upwards, into devious 
bye-paths. Thus we not unfrequently find in such animals 
more just and natural judgments than we find in many 
men, especially in men of letters." 

This (temporary and accidental) association of certain 
metaphysical teaching with physics,* must naturally tend 

# An instructive instance occurred not long ago, on the part of one of 
our leading thinkers, of the assumption that a protest against such 
association must necessarily be unscientific. Mr. Gladstone, in an 
address given at Liverpool, had remarked : " Upon the ground of what 
is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation ; in 
the name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from governing 
the world." Upon this he was taxed by Mr. Herbert Spencer 
(" Study of Sociology? p. 393) as " conspicuously making himself 
the exponent of the anti-scientific view," as regarding as " irre- 
ligious any explanation of nature which dispenses with immediate 



Scientific Evolution. 149 

to make Christian ministers assume a jealous if not hostile 
attitude towards physical science, and also to alienate a 
certain number of their disciples from them. Surely there 

divine superintendence," and as overlooking " the fact that the doctrine 
of gravitation, with the entire science of physical astronomy, is open to 
the same charge " as the doctrine of evolution. Mr. Spencer is one of 
the last men to make an ill-considered charge, least of all against a 
thinker of a school opposed to his own, and it is therefore interesting 
to find that he does not appear to contemplate even the possibility of 
right being on Mr. Gladstone's side. That gentleman has written to 
vindicate himself from the charge of hostility to science, and to say 
(Contemporary Review, December, 1873, p. 163) that his complaint 
is that the functions of the Almighty as Creator and Governor of the 
world are denied upon grounds, which . . . " appear to " him 
" utterly and manifestly insufficient to warrant such denial." But in 
fact what. Mr. Gladstone said was most true and just — not in opposition 
to Mr. Spencer (who is open to criticism of another kind), but in oppo- 
sition to the general tendency and effects on men's minds of the teach- 
ing in vogue — an effect boastingly announced by outspoken adherents. 
Caro (" L'Idee de Dieu," p. 47) observes : " Science conducts God 
with honour to its frontiers, thanking Him for His provisional services." 
Mr. Gladstone said no more than this ! But there is a further misun- 
derstanding. To explain the conditions of the solar system, considered 
with reference to physical science alone, the laws of astronomy are of 
course sufficient ; but to adequately explain such conditions as parts of 
a great whole of which our own intellectual faculties form a portion, 
astronomical laws are not sufficient, according to the teaching of a 
definite school of philosophy which claims Aristotle for its founder. 
Therefore, according to that philosophy, to say that a full recognition 
of the "doctrine of evolution" dispenses with "immediate divine 
superintendence," whether in the moon's motion or in the fall of a pro- 
jectile, would be absurd. But this is the very error into which the 
unlearned are apt to fall, and this is the absurdity against which Mr. 
Gladstone meant, no doubt, to protest — the absurdity, that is, of sup- 



150 Contemporary Evolution. 

is not merely much excuse for, but merit in such hos- 
tility, when the nature, in their eyes, of two conflicting 
interests is considered. For any one who accepts not a 
revelation, but only natural religion, must regard reli- 
gious and physical truth as possessing no common measure, 
just as the grandeur and beauty of Saturn's rings and the 
grandeur and beauty of an heroic act of generous self- 
denial cannot be compared together. To such acceptors 
of revelation, questions as to " the age of the world " or 
the " law of new specific origins " must appear trivial 
details when weighed in the balance with such questions 
as, " Is the human will really free ? " " Are our efforts 
after virtue lovingly responded to by an Infinite Being, 
who knows every secret of our hearts so intimately, that 
the closest human scrutiny is but an utterly inadequate 



posing that " gravitation " or " evolution " if accepted are not " utterly 
and manifestly insufficient" to account for the phenomena, apart from 
Divine action, when such phenomena are considered as part of a uni- 
verse made up of spiritual as well as of material existences. It seems 
then, evident, that Mr. Gladstone, in the passage first cited, speaks 
as the adherent of one school of philosophy, while Mr. Spencer speaks 
as the adherent of another. The claims of these rival philosophies 
cannot be stated in this note, but whether the peripatetic be true or 
false, all who hold it have a perfect right to speak as Mr. Gladstone 
spoke, without on that account having one fraction the less of love for 
physical science or of desire for knowledge of the laws of the pheno- 
menal universe, from " gravitation" to the sociological value of the art 
of music and the true teleological relations of the " locomotive " and 
the " fiddle " respectively. 



Scientific Evohttion. 151 

symbol of it?" " Has a revelation been made; and if 
so, what are its contents ? n 

If we before thought it just that those convinced of 
scientific truths should be moved to discourage a system 
they deem to be in contradiction with reason " from the 
scientific point of view, we must surely also think it just 
that those convinced of philosophic truths should be moved 
to discourage a system they deem to be in contradiction 
with reason/' from the philosophic point of view. So 
long, therefore, and in so far as pantheism or materialism 
are associated with physical science, those who uphold 
theism will be more or less opposed to such science 
while so associated. Thus it seems that the two special 
causes considered act together to prolong the already 
long-standing antagonism between physics and theology. 

Yet of any real antagonism between them we have 
found no trace, even in such a proof case as the appli- 
cation of the evolutionary hypothesis to the appearance 
of new species of animals. Physical science should then 
be considered, alike by the philosophic Christian and 
anti-Christian, as neutral and^ indifferent. The question 
whether the philosophies in vogue accept and collocate 
the facts of science better than any other philosophy, 
cannot be considered till we come to the question of 
philosophic evolution. Meanwhile, it appears that it is 
only possible for the advance of science to influence 
Christianity through such philosophy as may be incor- 



152 Contemporary EvohUion. 

porated with it. Philosophy affords, then, the real battle- 
ground for the contending forces, and it is on that all- 
important field that the future of Europe, the endurance 
of an existing social system, and the fate of Christianity 
must be decided. 

But we may ask, Has not the advance of science itself 
an indirect effect upon the struggle ? Does this advance 
tend to hinder or promote the study of philosophy ? If 
it does do either, then, of course, it indirectly aids in the 
conflict, though itself inoperative directly. Now every 
physical science is, when once its study has been fairly 
begun, intensely interesting. Most popular sciences, such 
as zoology, botany, geology, etc., are followed with com- 
parative facility, and are, to most minds, far easier than 
philosophical study, where the intellect has so constantly 
to be turned in upon itself. Yet from the limitations 
imposed by their very nature on the physical sciences, 
they tend to leave the minds of the more inquiring (and 
as education becomes diffused, of a greater number) 
with an unsatisfied craving after deeper explanations — 
in fact, with a desire for consistent philosophical concep- 
tions to serve as a support for the laws and phenomena, 
and to embrace in one whole all that such sciences make 
known. Yet within the last century there has been an 
increasing inclination to direct minds more and more 
exclusively to phenomena, and philosophy (especially in 
this country) has been more and more discredited and 



Scientific Evolution. 153 

neglected, till the very name " metaphysics " has become 
a bye-word of reproach. As might have been expected, 
however, a reaction has set in, and for the last five and 
twenty years the importance of philosophy and its actual 
necessity as a basis for science has been more and more 
obtaining recognition, and the reaction is well exemplified 
by the declarations of our most esteemed teachers of 
natural science. On the continent the same spectacle 
meets our view, and Strauss, Biichner, Vogt, and Hart- 
mann aid powerfully, even by their destructive efforts, in 
directing popular attention to fundamental questions of 
philosophy which underlie all physical science. 

There can be little doubt but that the further advance 
of science must aid indirectly in furthering that philo- 
sophic evolution which has next to occupy us. Nay, it 
is probable that the great philosophic reaction, towards 
which we seem to be rapidly approaching, would not be 
possible did not physical science attain a great develop- 
ment and wide popularity — so many minds being driven 
into philosophy through science. Thus through the science 
of matter, an increasing number of thinkers will come 
to have their attention directed to the science of mind. 
Recognising that " the proper study of mankind is man," 
and the all-importance of the old Delphic TvwOl aeavrov, 
they will necessarily be led to " psychology " (the portal 
of " metaphysics "), and thence to those questions which 
have occupied the noblest minds in all ages. 



154 Contemporary Evolution. 

But leaving for the present the question of philosophy, 
let us seek the best answer we can get to our special 
question here — the effect of scientific evolution on the 
Church and her ministers. 

We have s^en that physical science must go on in- 
creasing and diffusing itself while the disconnection of 
the clergy from the pursuit and attainment of distinction 
in the field of such science is likely to widen. At the 
same time we have seen that the assertions of Christian 
theology are not of a nature to be capable of disproof 
by any science of the kind. If physics could demon- 
strate that there is no knowable or personal First Cause ; 
that no prototypal design in eternity preceded the orderly 
evolution of the physical universe in time ; if it could 
show that death, which necessitates the cessation of 
intellectual action as we experience it, necessarily or 
certainly renders all intellectual action impossible ; if 
it could demonstrate that Christ never lived or never 
rose, the blessed Virgin was not immaculately conceived, 
or that there is no Divine presence in the eucharist, — 
then indeed the triumph of such science would but be 
another phrase to denote the annihilation of Christianity ; 
but to all such questions physical science can have 
necessarily nothing to say. But it is here contended, 
not only that the growth of physical science cannot in 
itself have an ultimately detrimental effect on the Church, 
but that its very growth is accidentally calculated to 



Scientific Evolution. 155 

indirectly bring about results of an opposite character. 
If when we come to consider philosophic evolution, we 
find reason to believe that such evolution will not be 
prejudicial to Christianity, then the number of Christians 
(and of the adherents of that natural religion of reason 
which Christianity takes for its basis) must continue 
to be large. In that case both its teachers and disciples 
must come to share in, and be more or less thoroughly 
imbued with, that physical science culture which it has 
been supposed will hereafter be so generally diffused. 
They will thus be guarded from simply accepting— as 
so many (through ignorance) now accept — the dogmatic 
assertions of some physical experts that a real incom- 
patibility exists between science and religion. Also, 
many adherents of natural theology will as surely be- 
come convinced that arguments which they have dis- 
covered to be futile as directed against natural religion 
have neither more nor less weight as directed against 
Christianity.* On the other hand, the very arguments 



* The late Mr. John Stuart Mill in his " Autobiography " (p. 70) 
laments that " those who reject revelation very generally take refuge 
in an optimistic deism, a worship of the order of nature and the 
supposed course of providence, at least as full of contradictions 
and perverting to the moral sentiments as any of the forms of 
Christianity, if only it is completely realised." At pp. 38, 39, he 
tells us that his father held Butler's " Analogy " in esteem, and that 
it " kept him, as he said, for some considerable time, a believer in 
the divine authority of Christianity, by proving to him that whatever 



156 Contemporary Evolution. 

which they have to adduce in favour of natural theology- 
will by many be seen to apply further, and plainly 
serve as supports to the foundations of Christianity while 
harmonising with its whole genius and structure. 

Again, physical science being almost universally dif- 
fused, will have lost its aspect of novelty, and also 
" aggressiveness " will be clearly seen to be no proper 
attribute of science, but only of certain definite philo- 
sophical systems previously associated with it. 

The laity will not find many amongst their clergy 
distinguished in physical science; but this result will not 
be altogether unwelcome to them, because, however proper 
they may deem it for priests, under peculiar social con- 
ditions, or now and again through some special vocation, 
to devote themselves to physical science, yet they must 
abstractedly consider " Pegasus harnessed to the plough," 
as a symbol quite inadequate to represent the incongruity 
between such an employment and the ecclesiastical state. 

are the difficulties in believing that the Old and New Testaments 
proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise and good Being, 
the same and still greater difficulties stand in the way of the belief 
that a Being of such a character can have been the maker of the 
universe. He considered Butler's argument as conclusive against 
the only opponents for whom it was intended. Those who admit an 
omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler 
of such a world as this, can say little against Christianity, but what 
can, with at least equal force, be retorted against themselves " / On 
this subject consult the Dublin Review for January, 1874, Art. I., 
"Mr. Mill's Philosophical Position." 



Scientific Evolution. 157 

Yet though they will not find their clergy distinguished, 
they will find them universally as well acquainted with 
physical science as will be the bulk of cultivated men not 
specially devoted to it. They will thus be naturally en- 
couraged to an increased confidence and trust in their 
religious teachers, whilst the latter will demonstrate to the 
laity (by the mere fact of the mode of life they have 
chosen, for all their physically scientific culture) the really 
neutral character of all physical science in its relations 
with religion. Finally the clergy, having been compelled 
by circumstances to make this closer acquaintance with 
physical science, will know and be able to point out readily 
and exactly what they may deem to have been the in- 
ferential errors of the preceding period as well as to com- 
bat more effectively such venerable conservatives as may 
continue to reiterate arguments analogous to some of the 
dysteleological * arguments of to-day. 

If the foregoing views are correct, it seems to follow 
that, together with the changes anticipated, the Church's 
ministers may not improbably regain much of that social 
and political influence which they have at present lost. 
Not that such influence will be exercised directly, as was 
the case in the Middle Ages — the process of division of 

* Dysteleology is a term which Professor Haeckel has devised 
to denote the study of the " purposelessness" of organs. An argument 
founded on such a conception, and relating to the appe?idix vermifor- 
vzis } has already been noticed. 



158 Contemporary Evolution. 

labour alone would render that impossible. Their influence 
will only be able to be exercised indirectly by the peaceful 
process of persuading public opinion. 

Thus it appears to the writer of this essay that the pro- 
cess of scientific evolution, and the action of the actively 
anti-Christian section of the community will probably 
result in the development of a clergy and laity more 
thoroughly, because more reflectively and self-consciously, 
Christian and scientific in their physio-philosophical views 
than the world has* yet seen. Some of the most recent 
developments in physiology, notably that of the nervous 
centres, and the most modern discoveries in anthropology, 
are, to say the least, singularly harmonious Vith the 
Church's traditional teaching. Such developments and 
such discoveries may be, and probably are, fatal to crude 
views popularly considered religious and Christian in this 
country — such, e.g., as reciprocal action of soul and body, 
and the existence of a primitive civilisation, in the vul- 
gar acceptation of that phrase. But they harmonise per- 
fectly with the traditional teaching of theologians concern- 
ing the anima forma corporis } and homo sylvaticus, and 
with principles laid down centuries before such discoveries 
were made. Few religious controversial errors are more 
common than that of supposing that a Christian doctrine 
has been refuted, when in fact it is but a post-Cartesian 
superstition that has been laid low, and thereby the old 
traditional view has become the more strengthened and 



Scientific Evolution. 159 

justified. Descartes forsook the old traditional teaching 
as to the soul for speculative novelties of his own, which 
have spread far and wide, with the natural result of dis- 
gusting scientific physiologists with views erroneously 
supposed to be specially orthodox. Here, however, we 
are approaching the philosophical domain. 

To conclude, there appears much reason for supposing 
that the process we have attempted to follow will be the 
occasion indeed for the abandonment of Christianity by 
many individuals, but that nevertheless the Church herself 
will be strengthened and made, not only more capable of 
self-defence on the scientific arena, but also more vigorous 
and better armed for attack against adversaries who now 
possess very great influence. We have here, in fact, an- 
other aspect of the same process referred to in " political 
evolution " — that which renders bracing climates, rough 
living, and absence of medical aid, beneficial to a " com- 
munity," however fatal to " individuals," by killing off 
weak members and reducing it to a compact community 
of hardy and vigorous survivors. 

The doctrines of the Church, whether they are or are 
not founded on fact, will at least receive an unexpected 
and powerful support and justification, if it comes to be 
demonstrated with regard to fresh scientific theories here- 
after (as it has already been with evolution), that they are 
powerless weapons as employed against her, she having 
asserted beforehand principles amply sufficient to shield 



160 Contemporary Evolution. 

her from such attacks. As to evolution as applied to 
animal life, it is absolutely unquestionable by any one who 
understands the meaning of the terms that " it is evident 
that ancient and most venerable theological authorities 
distinctly assert derivative creation, and thus their teach- 
ing harmonises with all that modern science can possibly 
require."* As the present writer has elsewhere ob- 
served : f "It can hardly be denied to be a noteworthy 
fact, that the Church should have unconsciously pro- 
vided for the reception of modern theories by the omis- 
sion of fruitful principles and far-reaching definitions 
centuries before such theories were promulgated, and 
when views directly contradicting them were held univer- 
sally, and even by those very men themselves who laid 
down the principles and definitions referred to. Circum- 
stances so remarkable, such undesigned coincidences, 
which, as facts, cannot be denied, must be allowed to 
have been * preordained* by all those who, being theists, 
assert that a i purpose* runs through the whole process 
of cosmical evolution. Such theists must admit that, 
however arising or with whatever end, a prescience has 
watched over the Church's definitions, and that she has 
been so guided in her teaching as to be able to harmonise 
and assimilate with her doctrines the most modern 
theories of physical science." 

*" Genesis of Species," 2nd edition, p. 305. 
f " Lessons from Nature," p. 449. 



Scientific Evolution. 161 

But the widespread reception of the doctrine of organic 
evolution aids Christianity in yet two other ways. In 
the first place, it aids it by making more clearly manifest 
than before to those who are neither theologians nor 
philosophers the extreme importance of the Christian 
dogma of creation, both by the fatal consequences 
erroneously deduced from evolution by those who believe 
its affirmation to be equivalent to the denial of creation, 
and by the enthusiastic reception given to evolution by 
Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, and others, expressly on the 
very ground of the supposed refutation by it of that 
cardinal Christian doctrine. Secondly, it aids Christianity 
by demonstrating how hopeless is the impossibility of 
refuting that dogma by any advance of physical science ; 
for the most hostile efforts of the most skilled assailants 
have to their despite resulted in the decorating and fill- 
ing in as it were, of the Christian doctrine of creation, 
instead of ending in its hoped for overthrow. For, 
as will be urged in the next chapter, the congruity of 
creative action with the universe, £s manifested in our 
own free will, is made plain to us on a priori grounds ; 
and, similarly, from a consideration of the nature of the 
First Cause, we are compelled to regard all existing forms, 
organic and inorganic, as responding to prototypal ideas 
in God.* With these conceptions once accepted, we 

* See " Lessons from Nature," pp. 275 and 279. 



1 62 Contemporary Evolution. 

can now see, on evolutionary principles, how in the 
instantaneous creation taught by St. Augustine the 
whole vast series of animal and vegetable forms, created 
potentially " in the beginning/' have become actual from 
time to time as the conditions for their manifesta- 
tion have in their appointed order from time to time 
occurred. Indeed, even the literal narrative of Scripture 
as to creation must be acknowledged to have been a 
remarkable anticipation of modern views compared with 
other ancient cosmogonies. This is confessed even by 
Haeckel, who speaks of it as distinguished " by the simple 
and natural chain of ideas which runs through it, and 
which contrasts favourably with the confused mythology 
of creation current among most of the other ancient 
nations ; v there, he adds, u two great and fundamental 
ideas meet us . . . with surprising clearness and 
simplicity, — the idea of separation or differentiation, and 
the idea of progressive development ox perfecting!' What- 
ever divergence of opinion, however, may exist as to the 
sense and meaning of the w r ords of Genesis, any disproof 
of the Christian doctrine authoratively taught by St. 
Augustine is absolutely impossible. 

There seems then to be nothing in the process of 
scientific evolution to cause reasonable alarm and anxiety 
to Christians, or to afford their opponents any well- 
grounded hope. Such evolution can indeed be indirectly 
influential through the philosophy which may be mixed 



Scientific Evolution. 163 

up with it, but by that alone. The question then as to 
the future course of the philosophic aspect of contem- 
porary evolution is the supremely important question of 
all those connected with that great modern movement, 
the Renaissance, made up as it is of the partly allied « 
partly conflicting elements of paganism and civicism. To 
this question the writer proposes to next address himself. 



CHAPTER V. 

PHILOSOPHIC EVOLUTION. 

r I "HE attempt has been made in the last chapter to 
A trace the effect on Christianity of a further evolution 
of physical knowledge, and the conclusion arrived at was 
that such evolution must be itself comparatively un- 
influential, inasmuch as it could act only indirectly by 
stimulating the diffusion of philosophical ideas. In the 
third chapter we saw reason to believe that the results 
of political evolution would also depend upon the course 
hereafter taken by philosophy. We have here, then, to 
consider that supreme question concerning the result of 
the Renaissance movement, namely, the philosophical 
direction it is likely to take, with the hope of being able 
to form a final judgment as to the result of the great 
conflict between reviving paganism and the Christian 
Church. 

The prospect that first strikes the eye of one surveying 
the field of contemporary speculative activity cannot be 
very encouraging to the lover of Christianity. Strauss, 
Buchner, Vogt, Haeckel, and Hartmann in Germany at 
present attract the sympathies of multitudes now co- 
operating, at least in will, with the attack made by 
Bismarck at the same time on both freedom and Chris- 



Philosophic Evolution. 165 

tianity. In France, though the school of Comte is com- 
paratively small, yet English sensationalism, that of Mr. 
Spencer, is making considerable advances, while the old 
Voltairian spirit holds its own with a tenacity similar to 
that possessed by the " principles of 1789." In Italy the 
English and German speculative schools are also making 
inroads, while, if such is not yet the case in the Iberian 
Peninsula, traditional convictions are gradually losing 
their hold, so that such exemption may perhaps be mainly 
assigned to political conditions unfavourable for intellec- 
tual activity. 

In England a remarkable change has come over the 
spirit of the nation, and now by a singular coincidence 
even the liveliest sentiments of pity for the brute creation 
happen to concur with popular science in tending to ob- 
scure the distinction between rational and irrational 
natures, and in promoting a ready acceptance of the 
great doctrine concerning the essential bestiality of man. 
This doctrine is here specially referred to because it has 
in fact become the test doctrine by which the philoso- 
phical position of teachers and disciples may best be 
gauged."* In the fourth chapter of this essay it was stated 
that a certain philosophy was much diffused by means 

* Mr. A. J. Mott, in his opening address, October, 1873, to the 
Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, p. 3, says : " Ques- 
tions concerning the origin of mankind have become either the 
radiating or the culminating points in most branches of science." 



1 66 Contemporary Evolution. 

of physically scientific teaching, a strongly anti-Christian 
philosophic school, of which Strauss may be taken as a 
type, having eagerly caught at such physical teaching as 
a most convenient auxiliary. 

The English of the eighteenth century were the leaders 
in speculative thought, and for all the great praise often 
bestowed upon German culture, the same may be said 
of those of our metaphysical writers of to-day who also 
deal with physical science. Darwin has nowhere so 
great a following as in Germany, while Mill has no slight 
influence in the land where his ashes repose. It will, it 
is believed, then, be amply sufficient for our purpose if 
we mainly direct our attention to the English sensational 
school which is ousting Hegel in Germany, and Cousin 
in France, and which claims to have done justice to Kant 
and Reid by harmonising the truths they held with the 
apparently contradictory, but really complementary, veri- 
ties put forward by those they refuted. The teaching of 
the English school, as represented, amongst others, by 
Mill, Bain, Spencer, and Lewes, logically culminates in 
three negations ; namely, of God, the soul, and virtue. 
Yet this is the school still honoured by the University of 
London with its exclusive patronage, thus imbuing with 
its doctrines the minds of all our most cultured youth. 
If such a system can sustain itself, and, still more, if it 
can propagate itself, its effect on Christianity need not 
be stated. These terms, which some may be disposed to 



Philosophic .Evolution. 167 

think too severe as applied to our popular English sys- 
tem, cannot be fully justified here. It must suffice to 
remind readers that by Professor Clifford atheism is now 
avowed, that Spencer declares theism to be not even 
thinkable, and that the subordinate systems of all the 
school necessarily deny virtue in refusing every element 
of spontaneity to the human will. But this denial is 
not less evident from yet another point of view. Accord- 
ing to the popularly received view of evolution — the view 
that is put forward by Spencer, Darwin, Bastian, Vogt, 
Biichner, and Haeckel — virtue is absolutely identified with 
the most brutal selfishness. As Mr. Martineau has tersely 
put it : * " Conscience is a hoarded fund of traditionary 
pressures of- utility; . . . our highest attributes are 
only the lower that have lost their memory, and mistake 
themselves for something else." Two considerations, how- 
ever, present themselves at once with reassuring aspect 
to the student of the various systems just now in vogue. 
These are, first, their discord and the internecine war 
amongst the teachers of these various systems, and 
secondly, the grotesqueness of the idol which each seve- 
rally offers to the homage of his followers. Thus Mr. Mill 
and Mr. Spencer diverge respecting even the very founda- 
tion of the whole fabric of knowledge, which foundation 
the second asserts, while the first denies, to be "incon- 

* Contemporary Review, April, 1872, p. 610. 



1 68 Contemporary Evolution. 

ceivability." Mr. Bain and Mr. Spencer also differ on the 
same question ; Mr. Bain asserting " experience," and not 
"inconceivability," to be the basis of certitude. The 
" principle of contradiction " presents another point on 
which they differ. Comte's teaching is repudiated with 
apparent scorn by Mr. Spencer, while quite lately a w r ide 
divergence* from the teaching of the last-named writer 
has been introduced by his brother sensist, Mr. G. H. 
Lewes, no less than from that of Mr. Mill.f 

In this their mutual destructiveness the negative philo- 
sophers of our day but follow in the footsteps of their 
predecessors of the last three centuries ; and were it not 
that " while the grass grows the steed starves," and that 
we need something positive, such systems might be left 
unassailed to the action of their own mutually disinte- 
grating influences. 

The curious objects presented to veneration by these 
systems may claim a passing notice. 

We have first the "Unknowable" J as an object whereon 

* Thus, in his " Problems of Life and Mind," Mr. Lewes describes 
"conceptions" as "symbols" (p. 191), and affirms that the "object 
felt exists precisely as it is felt" (p. 192). Again (p. 420) he says 
that what is " unpicturable " may be " conceivable," and he plainly 
declares his dissent from Mr. Spencer's " transfigured realism." 

f As when Mr. Lewes asserts (p. 398) that the truths respecting 
triangles are not generalisations but intuitions, and again (p. 424), 
when he declares that " much " that Mill includes under induction 
is either " intuition " or " description." 

J It is rather amusing to find how much is after all "known" 






Philosophic E volte tion. 169 

to expend our religious instincts, an entity without intel- 
ligence or volition, without an affection or a purpose, 
as much the cause of everything vile as of all we most 
admire — an entity to be saluted only by exclamations 
(vocal or mental) of "It is! It is!" 

Then we have the " universum " of Strauss, the con- 
tempt of Schopenhauer for which was so great a sin in 
the eyes of the former, seeing that Strauss demanded for 
his idol (what from no sane man will he ever get) a 
devotion such as a good man feels for his God ! 

A more naturally popular, but really as absurd an idol 
is that "humanity" of M. Comte, so curtly dismissed 
by Mr. Spencer* as a quite inadequate object of reverence, 
which a little reflection readily enough shows it to be. 
Small value can ever be widely set on the " immor- 
tality " which positivism promises to its faithful disciples, 
and for the following reasons : 1. Few persons will care 
for a popularity which follows upon their utter personal 
annihilation. 2. Few, again, can hope for such immor- 
tality at all, since the immense majority of men must 
be content to die unknown. 3. Still fewer, it may be 
affirmed, would really prize posthumous veneration by 



about this " Unknowable." Thus we learn from Professor Tyndall 
("Use and Limit of the Imagination in Science") that it is known 
to have what may be compared with " shores," and further than 
these " shores of the unknowable " are known to be " infinite." 
* "Study of Sociology," p. 311. 



170 Contemporary Evolution. 

public opinion, when they consider how many really con- 
temptible and vile characters have been popularly revered. 

4. The positivist heaven is, moreover, necessarily denied to 
many of the most virtuous, since it is a necessary con- 
dition of the virtue of many to live obscure and unknown. 

5. Finally, the difficulty which a conscientious man ex- 
periences in estimating even his own motives and cha- 
racter, shows how simply impossible it is for many men 
accurately and justly to estimate each other's real merits. 
But one of the drollest notions of what may fitly inspire 
reverence is put forth by Mr. Spencer himself ; not indeed 
in his own person, but in that of an imaginary disputant, 
whose discourse he calls " comparatively consistent." 
This disputant is made to speak * of the oscillations of 
molecular motion thus : " The activities of this imponder- 
able substance, though far simpler, and in that respect far 
lower, than the activities we call mind, are at the same 
time far higher than those we call mind in respect of their 
intensity, their velocity, their subtlety. . . . Thought 
is quick, light is many millions of times quicker." Thus 
quick and strong jumpings and very complex antics are 
relatively " high "—using that word in the sense we apply 
it to mind. Exceedingly complex gyrations of atoms are 
thus higher than " love of God or man." Contemplating 
in imagination the atomic oscillations which this view of 



# " 



Psychology," vol. i., p. 622. 



Philosophic Evolution. 171 

the universe puts before him, the Spencerian disciple may- 
be imagined to exclaim : What wonderfully oscillating 
atoms ! how noble ! with what energy and rapidity do 
they not vibrate ! they are divine ! Venite, adoremus ! As 
has been said,- Mr. Spencer has not adopted this view as 
his own answer to an imaginary objector; nevertheless he 
patronises it as a " comparatively consistent " one, and 
certainly does not condemn it as nonsense ; yet it is really 
wonderful how any one man of intelligence should for 
a moment imagine that any other could think material 
particles to be one bit more "noble" compared with 
" mind/' let them perform what gyrations they may, or 
that they were made even a trifle " higher " by such rest- 
lessness. This passage reminds us of the Emersonian 
religion latent in the pious pirouettes of Fanny Ellsler.* 
Returning to our main subject, we may note yet another 
curious phenomenon. We refer to the strange contradic- 
tion presented by the Sensist school, which contains 
reasoners who ignore reason, and teachers of others, who 
not content with ignoring their own ego as a substance, 
fail to appreciate their own passing logical activity. 
Mr. Spencer and Mr. Lewes, however fundamentally they 
differ, agree in representing " inference " as really nothing 
but " association." No doubt the sense-judgment, so to 
speak, of brutes, is the imagination of unapparent. 

* See Contemporary Review, January, 1872, p. 187; and "Lessons 
from Nature/ 5 p. 362. 



172 Contemporary Evolution. 

sensibles through association with felt sensibles ; but 
rational-judgment is, at the least/the taking up and trans- 
formation of this sensible association by the action of a 
self-conscious intellect. Mr. Lewes* speaks of bees 
feeling geometry in constructing their cells. They feel, 
of course ; but to imply they have thereby any appre- 
ciation of geometry would be hardly less unreasonable 
than to imply the same of crystallising salt or sugar. 
The " logic " of sense is truly " logic," but it is the logic 
of some one else, not of the brute that feels. Mr. Lewes, 
however, makes a remark of so strange a character, that 
it is impossible after reading it not to hesitate before 
accepting any opinion of his respecting intellect. Speak- 
ing f of " instinct " as being, according to his strange 
notion, " lapsed or indiscursive intelligence," he says : 
" The objection will doubtless be raised that instinct is 
wholly destitute of the characteristic of intelligence in that 
it has no choice ? its operation is fixed, fatal. The reply 
is twofold : in the first place, the objection, so far as it 
has validity, applies equally to judgment where, given 
the premisses, the conclusion is fatal, no alternative being 
open. Axioms, in this sense, are logical instincts. Thus 
the highest intellectual process is on a level with this 
process said to be its opposite/' " On a level ! " — 
" applies equally ! " Why, here the essential distinction 

* " Problems of Life and Mind," p. 240. 
f Op. cit, p. 141. 



Philosophic Evolution. 173 

between " instinct " and " reason " is utterly ignored. 
" Instinct " is " fatal," but blind. Reason is " fatal/' but 
sees. Axioms cannot be "instincts," because they are 
seen to be true, and are not blindly followed. 

But is it possible for modern philosophy to culminate 
in such unsatisfactory and misleading exhibitions as this ? 
It may be safely affirmed that self-contradiction, con- 
fusion, and that speculative annihilation, philosophical 
scepticism, must be the logical outcome of all such modern 
philosophy as either ignores the distinctive characters of 
reason, or denies our certainty of our own continued 
substantial existence, as does the philosophy alike of 
Mill, of Huxley, and of Spencer. The limits of this 
essay prohibit any attempt to demonstrate the latter 
operation ; and it is the less necessary as the present 
writer has endeavoured elsewhere * to make it clear. 
But it may be here remarked, first, that it is logically 
impossible to deny our knowledge of the substantial and 
persisting ego without at the same time implying such 
knowledge ; and secondly, that uncertainty on the matter 
can alone be justified by introducing a scepticism so 
complete that the doubt itself vanishes in the uncertainty 
which follows as to whether such doubt is not after all, 
certainty, ending in mental paralysis and the breakdown 
of all possible philosophy. But, once more, is this and 

* See " Lessons from Nature." chap. i. 



1 74 Contemporary Evolution. 



such as this the end of modern philosophic evolution ? As 
the New Academy has seemed to some to close the cycle 
of Greek speculative thought, is a hopeless and absolute 
philosophic scepticism to close that of the modern period ? 
That such is to be the end, Comte, as all know, has 
broadly proclaimed, and his English sympathiser, Mr. G. 
H. Lewes, for all his verbal changes about " metaphysics " 
and " metempirics," is as persistent as ever in denying the 
possibility of solving all those problems which have ever 
occupied the minds -of the highest intellects ; which pro- 
blems he collectively stigmatises as " metempirical." 

So gloomy and despairing a view is by no means 
shared by the present writer ; on the contrary, he looks 
forward with confident hope to great metaphysical pro- 
gress at no very distant period, and he sees no cause of 
discouragement in a certain apparent barrenness of results 
attending recent speculation. Progress is not uniform, 
but is effected by successively advancing waves, and even 
thus very unequally-.— advance in some directions being 
generally accompanied by, at least temporary, retrogres- 
sion in others. 

The artistic triumphs of Greece were not attained 
without an accompanying ethical depression, and when 
the decaying Graeco-Roman civilisation became largely 
replaced by that of hardy Teutons, fresh from the bap- 
tismal font, barbarian art accompanied the moral reno- 
vation. The literary culture of the Renaissance was 



Philosophic Evolution. 175 

synchronous with a wide-spread loss of political liberty 
to the profit of centralised despotism, while the gradual 
growth and consolidation of our parliamentary system 
marks a period of continued architectural decline. Mr. 
Lecky has, in his " History of Rationalism," admirably 
demonstrated to us how widespread sentiments and 
habits of thought simply drop out of fashion, and how 
beliefs which have never been disproved, and with their 
evidence still unrefuted, come gradually to be aban- 
doned and their evidence ignored, till a quite contradic- 
tory belief is eventually accepted. A wave of sentiment, 
far more than any logical process, repelled from men's 
minds the doctrine of man's ape origin when it was 
first mooted. It is the flow of an opposite wave of 
sentiment which determines its wide-spread acceptance 
now. Might we not then expect, a priori, that the 
great advance in natural knowledge of the last three 
centuries— those marvellous discoveries which have more 
and more directed men's minds to physical observation 
and experiment — should be accompanied by stagnation 
or retrogression along some other lines of thought ? 

Attention cannot fully be directed to two distinct 
inquiries simultaneously, and an exhausting pursuit of 
physics must necessarily starve some other intellectual 
habit. We should then be little surprised to -find for a 
time a philosophical decline accompanying scientific 
advance. Moreover, it is ever the wont of men's minds 



1 76 Contemporary Evolution. 

to depreciate the object of admiration of the period 
immediately preceding. We can view with more or less 
admiration the costume of a century past, but the fashion 
of some five or ten years ago seems to us more or less 
absurd, as well as distasteful. Thus each past activity 
has to wait for its due appreciation, until the period of 
unjust depreciation which has followed it has passed by. 

The architectural glories of Northern Europe, those 
mediaeval structures, at once (from their beauty and true 
principles of constfuction) poems and scientific treatises 
in stone, have only of late years ceased to be despised as 
barbarous. Now, universally appreciated, fragments of 
ruins which happy accident has saved from destruction, 
are guarded with jealous care, and thoughtfully studied 
as revelations of a skill and refinement which have passed 
from amongst us. 

As it is now with the material constructions of the 
Middle Ages, so, we may find reason to think, will it be 
to a yet greater extent with the far more marvellous 
intellectual fabrics those ages have bequeathed us. The 
soaring lightness of such lofty arches as those of the choir 
of Le Mans awake our admiration by reason of their 
beauty; but our wonder is yet more exercised by the 
solidity of those slender piers and towering buttresses, 
which, arch over arch, hold securely poised so vast a 
roof of stone at such an airy height. Similarly, the 
wonderful acuteness, the delicacy and subtlety of dis- 



Philosophic Evolution. 177 

tinction to be found in Scholastic writers are already- 
exciting the wonder of the few who, following the 
example of Sir William Hamilton, are beginning to make 
acquaintance with them. But it may be that wonder 
will ere long be much more widely excited by the 
solidity of the reasoning those acute and delicate minds 
thought out. A foretaste of such appreciation with 
respect to the philosophy of this period has lately been 
given us by one of its most distinguished opponents. 
The Lord Rector of Aberdeen, addressing his subjects 
thought it well to tell them : — * 

" The Scholastic philosophy is a wonderful monument 
of the patience and ingenuity with w T hich the human mind 
tried to build up a logically consistent theory of the 
universe. . . . And that philosophy is by no means 
dead and buried, as many vainly suppose. On the 
contrary, numbers of men of no mean learning and ac- 
complishment, and sometimes of rare power and subtlety 
of thought, hold by it as the best theory of things which 
has yet been stated. And, what is more remarkable, men 
who speak the language of modern philosophy neverthe- 
less think the thoughts of the Schoolmen/' 

It may be well, perhaps, now to state the reasons which 
make this increased appreciation probable. 

Mr. Spencer has remarked : " During all past times 

* See Contemporary Review ', March, 1874, p. 667. 



178 Contemporary Evolution. 

mankind have eventually gone right, after trying all 
possible ways of going wrong." * The same course man- 
kind appears also to follow in philosophic speculation. 
The great process of reductio ad absurdum has attended 
the evolution of our post-mediaeval metaphysics ; the 
logical result is scepticism. The intellectual paralysis (as 
respects philosophy) attending the modern sensational 
school, which is essentially the school of Hume, has 
already been noted ; it remains to call attention to the 
fact that Hume's philosophy is the logical consequence 
of the metaphysics referred to. That such is the case, 
indeed, the event has shown. Berkeley's mind was far too 
acute not to build logically on the premisses he accepted 
from Locke, and the same may be said of Hume with 
respect to Berkeley. The refutation which Kant for a 
time effected has been itself refuted by the aid of that 
very evolutionary process which Kant himself favoured 
and foreshadowed. In spite of the efforts of the phil- 
osopher of Konigsberg, in spite of Reid and his followers 
in England, and of Royer-Collard, Maine-de-Biran, 
Joufifroy, and Cousin in France, the most extreme sensa- 
tionalism is once more in possession of the field, ranging 
from Naples to Aberdeen, and from Bordeaux to St. 
Petersburgh. 

Thus the teaching of the whole school of modern meta- 



# « 



•' Study of Sociology," p. 306. 



Philosophic Evolution. 179 

physics ends in scepticism, in nihilism, as the ultimate 
result of materialism and idealism. 

It will naturally be asked, then, If such is not to be the 
end of philosophic evolution, what is the remedy, and how 
is recuperative force to be obtained ? 

The reply here offered is, that a remedy is to be ob- 
tained by digging deeper. No mere return to Kant is 
adequate to meet a scepticism which so much of Kant's 
system completely justifies. It is impossible to secure to 
practical reason its objective validity, if "pure" reason 
be declared fallacious. If the view here advocated be 
correct, what is needed, and what evolution will infallibly 
bring about, is not a return to a philosophy, but a return 
to the philosophy. For if metaphysics are possible, there 
is not, and never was or will be, more than one philosophy 
which, properly understood, unites all speculative truths 
and eliminates all errors : the philosophy of the phi- 
losopher — Aristotle. 

But, it will be exclaimed, — This is throwing us into con- 
fusion ; all the speculative discussions of the last two 
thousand years and more will have to be gone through 
again ! Aristotle is understood in many senses, and has 
given rise to many schools. It would be hardly less 
irrational to refer us to the Bible for theology than to 
refer us to Aristotle for philosophy ! And the propriety 
of the objection would be conceded, did there not exist 
a continuous traditional line of philosophic evolution, 



i8o Contemporary Evolution. 

bringing down the peripatetic philosophy to the present 
day. Others may exclaim, this is stagnation, or even 
reaction. But there is of course no real danger of either ; 
the laws of evolution in general render it absurd to 
suppose that stagnation, or a really reactionary reversal of 
development, can ever be possible. All that is possible is 
that speculation may revert to a temporarily abandoned 
line of inquiry, experience having demonstrated that all 
other possible lines end blindly. 

Many persons jnay be surprised to read the assertion 
that such a continuous and traditional school of phil- 
osophy exists at all ; but that it does exist is none the 
less a truth. The peripatetic philosophy simply fell out 
of fashion at the period of the Renaissance, when in the 
scientific and literary intoxication of the period, with its 
reviving Platonism, pantheism, and paganism, men left 
traditional lines of speculative thought to fall into bond- 
age to the philosophical empiric Descartes and the 
wonderfully over-estimated Bacon. The French phil- 
osophical heresiarch — the logical father both of our 
modern materialists and idealists — never understood — he 
had never even learned — the philosophy he ignorantly 
opposed. That philosophy, ridiculed and overborne, but 
never refuted, was pushed aside by the force of the 
popular current, and became, after a time, like the 
architecture of the colleges it had illustrated, a byeword 
of reproach and contempt ; till, ignored and forgotten, 



Philosophic Evohttion. 181 

the world is astonished to learn that it has never ceased 
to have both teachers and disciples. It is even amusing 
to observe how pointless are many of the arguments of 
moderns such as Mr. Spencer, Mr. Lewes, etc., from their 
want of acquaintance with the Scholastics, and the simple 
way* in which they think that all is done when Kant 
has been replied to, and that it is quite needless to go 
further back. 

Some readers may be disposed to ask, Where has this 
philosophy been preserved, and who are its teachers 
now? 

At the epoch of that flood of barbarian invasion which 
overspread a world deemed by so many to be approaching 
its end, the treasures of classic literature found fortunate 
shelter within the libraries of Benedictine monasteries, 
scattered far and wide in dense forests, savage, rocky 
solitudes, or dismal swamps. Those black-robed monks, 
whose manual labour spread agriculture over Northern 
Europe, not content with ministering to the peoples' 
bodily and spiritual needs, paved the way for refined 

* Thus Mr. Spencer ignores all philosophy anterior to Descartes, 
and contents himself with Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, as examples of 
the moderns. Mr. Lewes (" Problems," vol. i., p. 437) actually affirms, 
"All modern metempirics are either Kantian or founded upon 
Kantian principles." For examples of complete misapprehension of 
the only philosophy worthy the name, and consequently futile argu- 
mentation, see pp. 152, 212, 214, 245, 249, 265, 271, 278, 363, 368, 437, 
and 447. 



1 82 Contemporary Evolution. 

mental culture by their preservation of so many writings 
which, but for them, would have been finally lost to us. 
For these deeds the gratitude of all enlightened men of 
all creeds or of none has been and is theirs ; and thus 
when modern vandalism recently threatened with de- 
struction the venerable abbey of Monte Cassino, some of 
our noblest fellow-countrymen allowed no difference of 
belief to hinder their energetic protest against so cruel a 
blow to history, to literature, and to the glory of the 
Italian nation itself. 

At the epoch of that flood of pagan intoxication which 
overspread Europe at the Renaissance, as the culture of 
the traditional philosophy passed from disesteem to aban- 
donment, it found a fortunate shelter also within religious 
houses, and especially (as was most natural) with the 
Dominicans. The mission of the friar-preachers was, 
however (for some centuries to come at least), mainly 
accomplished, and thus we have to look elsewhere for 
its most efficient support Just at the critical moment 
there appeared in the arena of speculative conflict those 
ever fresh spiritual athletes, the sons of St. Ignatius of 
Loyola. In their colleges the traditional philosophy has 
been scrupulously preserved, and from Suarez and Lugo 
to Kleutgen (now living in exile) an uninterrupted body 
of teachers has carried on its cultivation and develop- 
ment, applying its principles again and again in oppo- 
sition to the various errors as they have arisen, from 



Philosophic Evolution. 183 

the time of the society's foundation to the present day. 
As gratitude is now due, and widely acknowledged, to 
the Benedictines, for their preservation during the illit- 
erate ages of our choicest literary treasures, so gratitude 
is now due, and will one day be even more widely ac- 
knowledged, to the Jesuits for their preservation during 
the whole Renaissance movement of our choicest philo- 
sophic treasures, as main guardians of the peripatetic 
tradition. 

The fathers of the society enjoy the glory of peren- 
nial persecution and hostility ; and, whatever may be 
the view taken of their merits, and whatever good men 
may oppose them, all must admit that they at least 
possess the distinction conferred on them by the special 
hostility of all the vilest of mankind. Nevertheless, it 
is not impossible that their careful preservation for us 
of the traditional philosophy may one day be reckoned 
a yet greater distinction. 

This philosophy then lives, and is taught amongst us 
here in England now, and it is to be regretted that 
some prominent English sensists do not profit by such 
teaching. Were one of the leaders of the modern school 
to cease altogether to write or teach for a period of 
some three years, and to endeavour to obtain for that 
period the hospitality of a Jesuit seminary, and there 
devote himself (merely at first as a learner, and not as 
a critic) to the acquisition of the peripatetic philosophy, 



184 Contemporary Evolution. 

his labour would not be lost. The present writer has 
too strong a belief in human free will to be confident 
that the supposed student's views would be thereby, as a 
matter of course, fundamentally modified, but is quite 
certain that his power and depth as a philosopher would 
be very greatly augmented, and, irrelevant matters being 
removed, controversy would be brought more aptly to 
an issue. 

It may be asked, however, Wherein do you see actual 
signs of such a revival of philosophy ? It may be an- 
swered, that amongst other indications the writer has pos- 
itive information of the advance of the peripatetic philo- 
sophy in Germany ; that Professor Ueberweg himself bore 
witness to such a movement ; that Mr. Spencer's own 
writings tend to force it on ; that Mr. Lewes' last book* 
is calculated to drive it forward at an accelerated rate ; 
that its course is facilitated by the philosophy of Hart- 

* See his " Problems of Life and Mind ;" we find there good peri- 
pateticism as to the soul and body unconsciously set forth at pp. 112, 
156, 160, and 161 ; as to the distinction between men and brutes, at pp. 
124, 153-155, 157, 160, 169, 250, and 296 ; as to universals, at p. 136 ; 
as to the existence of " potential " knowledge, at p. 243 ; as to the 
sort of existence possessed by " co-ordination," "life," and "mind," at 
p. 281 ; as to terminology, at p. 336 ; as to the relation of the ideal to the 
real order, at p. 342 ; as to mathematical intuitions, at p. 398 ; as to 
the relations between imagination and conception, at p. 420. Even as 
to logic, as an art, he goes wrong rightly. Thus he says (p. 77) 
" There is no more an art of reasoning than there is an art of breath- 
ing or digesting." But peripatetic logic is an art in so far as it is 



Philosophic Evohttion. 185 

mann ; and that the testimony of no less an opponent 
than Professor Huxley himself has borne witness to its 
vitality. Moreover, as will be almost immediately urged, 
recently discovered scientific facts and the direction of 
modern biological thought favour philosophical concep- 
tions universally prevalent amongst men of culture four 
centuries ago, but which have since been generally ne- 
glected and ignored. 

If, then, such a revival as is here indicated is indeed 
to be looked for; if that philosophy, in the terms of 
which the various Christian doctrines have been defined, 
is likely once more to play a prominent and dominant 
part in the intellectual world, — it is almost needless to 
point out that there can be no fear for Christianity. 
That evolution is taking such a course the present writer 
believes, and he consequently also believes that scientific 
and political evolution can but favour Christianity, in the 
modes predicted in former chapters of this essay, on the 
condition that philosophic evolution should be found to 
take no hostile direction. But if post-Cartesian philosophy 
has been so wanting in positive results, even from its 
own point of view, as is here maintained, are the gyra- 
tions it has gone through useless, and will the world 
be none the better for the expenditure of so much effort 

cathartic, and that as we may improve our actual breathing or diges- 
tion through a knowledge of physiology, so we may practically improve 
our actual reasoning through a knowledge of ^he laws qf thought. 



1 86 Contemporary Evolution. 

and so much skill ? Instead of such being the case, it 
seems probable that the post-Cartesian philosophy, of 
which Spencerism may be taken as the culmination, will 
have performed a most useful part. Indeed, considering 
how through it and its alliance with physical science, 
philosophy has penetrated where, but for these condi- 
tions, it might never have effected an entrance, it would 
be difficult to estimate its value and importance too 
highly. The main reason why the wide diffusion of 
Spencerism seems so advantageous is its bearing upon 
four fundamental objects : — I. The Ego. II. The Will. 
III. Nature. IV. God. 

I. With respect to the Ego, the very pertinacity with 
which writers of the agnostic school (that of Huxley, 
Spencer, etc.) have denied that we know its existence 
with supreme certainty, and the very arguments which 
they have made use of to disprove such certainty have 
really aided, in no small degree, the cause they have 
sought to overthrow. They have so aided it, by making 
manifest the extreme importance of our knowledge of our 
own continued existence — the substantial Ego, and forcing 
on us a recognition explicitly of much that is implicitly 
contained and involved in that knowledge, but which is 
apt to be overlooked or neglected. For every one, who, 
by this controversy has, for the first time, brought home 
to him the really marvellous nature of his own present 
knowledge of his past states of being, will thereby be 



Philosophic Evolution. 187 

brought to recognise that he has a knowledge of absolute, 
objective truth. His eyes will thus be opened to the 
supremely important truth, that he is endowed with an 
intellect which is not shut up in a mere subjective know- 
ledge of its own states and modifications, but which is 
endowed with the wonderful capacity of knowing ab- 
solute, objective truth external to these states. He will 
learn this through his recognition of the "veracity of 
memory, ,, without accepting which he cannot advance 
one step in knowledge. Consciousness is of the present, 
but we cannot know our own continued existence without 
at the same time knowing the past. This consideration 
alone is sufficient to refute the whole experimental phil- 
osophy which teaches that we become nothing but phe- 
nomena. For " experience " itself is not possible, unless 
memory can be relied on as trustworthy. My "ex- 
perience" would be of small value indeed, if I could not 
be absolutely certain that it was mine, and not that of 
some other person.* 

Again, every one who recognises the truth of his know- 
ledge of his own existence must equally recognise that 
his intellect declares certain dicta (such, e.g., as that " what 
thinks exists/' " the whole is greater than its part," " in- 
gratitude is blameworthy") to be absolutely and univer- 
sally true. He must further see, on examining the de- 

# See " Lessons from Nature," p. 23. 



1 88 Contemporary Evolution. 

clarations of his own intellect, that such truths as these 
are not agreed to by him out of sheer mental impotence — 
from mere inability to think the reverse — but that they 
are, on the contrary, truths which he apprehends actively, 
and which he sees to be positively necessary and abso- 
lutely universal, that they must be true in Sirius or the 
Pleiades, and that they were as true when the first film 
of mind laid the foundation of the Laurentian rocks. 
Thus again, his mind is in another mode carried by its 
own power and fdVce out of the mere subjective and 
phenomenal into the objective and noumenal region of 
absolute external truth. 

Once more, this self-knowledge will force on each one 
who investigates it, that his intellect has yet another 
power ; namely, that proceeding by a peculiar logical pro- 
cess (ratiocination) to draw forth explicitly truths im- 
plicitly contained in other truths, but not fully apparent 
till so drawn forth. When to the proposition, "All the 
radii of one circle are equal," we add, " the lines A and 
B are radii of one circle," we see that a third truth is 
implicitly contained in these two propositions ; which truth 
explicitly stated is the conclusion, " the lines A and B 
are equal," and the force of the whole process of influence 
is expressed by the word " therefore? This process forms 
yet another mode of arriving at real objective truth and 
knowledge other than phenomenal, for we learn that such 
lines as A and B must be equal everywhere and at all 



Philosophic Evolution. 189 

times, and that God Himself could not make them other- 
wise. The declarations of the intellect and its logical 
processes having been thus justified, its declarations as 
to " causation " and " morality " gain at once an un- 
questionable validity. It becomes a self-evident truth, 
that even if the material universe be eternal, its series 
of phenomenal, conditional changes, ranging in recurring 
cycles through a past eternity, must none the less re- 
quire a real, absolute eternal Cause, while the absolute 
declarations of the intellect respecting morals will ne- 
cessitate the attribution to that supreme Cause of "a 
goodness " harmonising with, however immeasurably 
exceeding, that of man. To put it shortly, this zealous 
propagation of the absurd denial of our knowledge 
of our own existence is but the prelude to a more 
thorough and complete understanding of that know- 
ledge and of all which it involves, than any other cause 
(save such denial) could well be conceived as producing. 
In knowing our own continued existence, we come to 
know, with a supreme degree of certainty, a whole 
system of objective truths which the intellect is seen to 
have the wonderful power, not only of perceiving, but 
of perceiving to be objectively, absolutely, and universally 
true. 

The facts here stated may be thus summed up : — 
Our recognition of our own self-knowledge reveals to us 
objective truth and our possession of it. 



190 Contemporary Evolution. 

It also shows us that there are universal, objectively 
necessary truths, and that we know them. 

Also it causes us to recognise the validity of ratiocina- 
tion, or the explicit evolution of implicit truth. 

Hence we learn the validity of our inference as to the 
existence of a First Cause adequate to produce all that 
we know as existing in its effects, and therefore as neces- 
sarily possessing qualities, such that "intellect/' "order," 
" purpose," etc., which we recognise as existing amongst 
its effects in ourselves, may be predicted of it in a supe- 
rior degree; such human characteristics being but adum- 
brations of the corresponding qualities in such First Cause. 

II. As to "Will." The persistency, and even passion, 
with which the declarations of the commonsense of man- 
kind are met by denials that we possess even a fragment 
of really self-determining power, serve to make even clearer 
than before the marvellous and isolated character of the 
power of choice, as also the important truths which its 
assertion implies. When it comes to be fully appreciated 
by the many, how rigid law rules, not only all irrational 
living beings, as well as inanimate and inorganic creatures, 
but also even the vast majority of our own actions, the 
marvellous character of our power of voluntarily choosing 
the less attractive of two modes of action will be less 
inadequately estimated. It will become generally under- 
stood, that while we may be certain of possessing that 
power of choice which all unprejudiced men know that 



Philosophic Evolution. 191 

they possess, yet that in making a free act of choice they 
really dominate and control the whole chain of physical 
causation by their free will As to the implications of 
this truth, it is evident that our own power of dominating 
physical causation renders supernatural action on the part 
of the First Cause not only credible, but to be anticipated 
a priori. Creative action, miracles, response to prayer, 
and the bestowal after death of rewards and punishments 
according to our exercise of volition during life, are not 
only completely congruous with a philosophy which asserts 
the freedom of the will, but are made antecedently pro- 
bable by such philosophy. Indeed, that such is really the 
case may be judged from a consideration of who those 
are who deny our power of free volition. They are one 
and all opponents of religion, natural as well as revealed. 
It is daily becoming more and more apparent, that to deny 
free will is to deny even the existence— still more the ob- 
ligation — of virtue, to uproot every possible basis of mora- 
lity, and to eliminate from the social organism those legal 
sanctions, and even those modes of speech, which are 
bound up with the very existence of " rights " and 
"duties." Yet these men, finding themselves forced by 
inexorable logic to accept religion if they accept free will, 
prefer to deny it, in spite of all the above-mentioned con- 
sequences, — prefer to be untrue to the dicta of their own 
intellects as to necessary truths, and even to commit the 
absurdity of denying the supreme certainty to them of their 



192 Contemporary Evolution. 

own existence ; more than this, they have every appear- 
ance of rejoicing in the doctrine of the bestiality of man, 
in the belief that they have no sentiment or aspiration 
which is not in root and essence the desire of food, or the 
brutal appetite of sex, or the dread of brutes more power- 
ful or more malignant than themselves. This phenomenon 
is one of much interest, and very instructive. At first 
sight it seems almost incredible that such bitter hostility 
should exist. Yet, apart from religion, a certain explana- 
tion presents itself in the trial to pride which arises from 
the admission of free will, since it places the poorest 
peasant on an absolute equality, as to morality, with the 
most cultured and refined, since both are equally capable 
of exercising rational, meritorious volition. If there is 
such a thing as morality at all, it must necessarily be be- 
yond comparison, as to value, with mental refinement, 
culture, or intellectual capacity ; and it necessarily follows, 
that a rude savage, with no implements but a few chip- 
ped flints, may be above all comparison in nobility with 
the greatest of our agnostic philosophers, "while a poor, 
paralysed old woman, sitting in a chimney-corner, may, 
by her good aspirations and volitions, be repeatedly per- 
forming mental acts, compared with which the discovery 
by Newton of the law of gravitation is as nothing."* 

Moreover, in free will and morality we have that which 

* " Lessons from Nature," p. 380. 



Philosophic Evolution. 193 

cannot be merely the result of the inheritance of the 
habitual actions, feelings, and imaginations of brutes. 
Conceptions of time and space may be with apparent 
plausibility (though not without real absurdity) repre- 
sented as the results of structural modifications induced 
in a practically infinite brute ancestry, which had been 
ever submitted to conditions of time and space ; but at 
any rate such ancestry was never at any time submitted 
to conditions of moral responsibility. It is in this way 
that the recognition of a power of choice in man, which 
only those false to their own reason can deny, renders 
the belief that man has been developed from a brute a 
true absurdity — a physical superstition which must vanish 
before the light spread abroad by a more diffused know- 
ledge of the powers and declarations of the human in- 
tellect. 

III. With respect to "nature," the modern conception 
of it is in many respects, as has been lately said, a re- 
turn to older views, or at least harmonises with such. 
The prevailing views are indeed simply pantheistic, but 
all that is positive in such views may be easily assimi- 
lated with philosophic theism. Indeed, it may be affirmed 
that much in modern physiology demands the philo- 
sophy of Aristotle as its logical complement, and the 
doctrine of biological evolution needs pre-eminently the 
aid of the peripatetic doctrine of " matter " and " form." 

Mr. Spencer's view of evolution itself may be taken 



194 Contemporary Evolution. 

up and included within a larger one, which will then 
assume the part of " form " to the " matter " provided 
for us by Mr. Spencer. 

Mr. Spencer's law is, that everything in the material 
universe is proceeding from an indefinite, incoherent ho- 
mogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogoieity. But he 
supplies us with no explanatory basis for this law. We 
can see, by his system, neither its origin, its ultimate 
future, nor the principle of its continuity. Our philo- 
sophy, however, shows us (by means of our self-conscious 
substantial Ego, endowed with the power of knowing 
objective truth) a necessary First Cause — which amongst 
its attributes must have an intelligence and a will, such 
as find their faint and inadequate type in the corre- 
sponding faculties of the human soul. Such a Cause, as 
intelligent, cannot be self-contradictory, and hence neces- 
sarily follows the continuity of cosmical evolution. It 
must, as Will, have such an intensity of "purpose," that 
no human purpose can be comparable with it. " Hence 
necessarily follows 'final causality' — the enchainment of 
all phenomena and their adaptation to ends in a heri- 
archy of augmenting activities, from celestial revolutions 
and the attractions and cohesions of sidereal masses, 
through vegetative life and animal sentiency up to 
self-consciousness and free volition ; so that, from king- 
dom to kingdom, the creation may rise towards an 
;d ea l — by successively higher degrees of participation in 



Philosophic Evolution. 195 

the perfection of the First Cause itself."* By the 
union of these two laws of (1) continuity, and (2) 
final causality, the whole phenomena of the universe — 
physical, biological, political, moral, and religious — may 
be really explained and understood, and Mr. Spencer's 
law may be accepted as conveniently expressing its 
material aspect and mode of action. Whether or not 
the teleological part of this conception can be gathered 
from mere irrational nature directly, it can most cer- 
tainly be obtained from a consideration of what is in- 
volved in our own self-consciousness. When such impli- 
cation is brought thence and applied to the universe, 
nature, on a large scale and when broadly read, loudly 
confirms it, though, as might be expected, the applica- 
tion of the human mind to the task of thoroughly com- 
prehending the purposes of God in any given phenome- 
non has led, as it must necessarily always lead, to de- 
lusion and disappointment. 

The phenomena of cosmical evolution are presented by 
the Sensist school in terms of matter and force, and Mr. 
Spencer presents us with matter also reduced to concep- 
tions of force. But that the universe can be explained 
by the conceptions of one sole force by itself, without 
any other force or any matter upon which such solitary 
force may act, is an evident absurdity. We must there- 

* " Lessons from Nature," p. 358. 



196 Contemporary Evolution. 

fore conceive at least two forces, or force and matter. 
But for a solitary force to act upon matter, that matter, 
even if consisting of but a single element, must have 
certain qualities and powers of response to incident forces 
— i.e. y we must conceive latent potentialities which inci- 
dent forces may render actualities. " Hence we get the 
formal law of cosmical evolution — whereof Mr. Spencer's 
law 'is the material expression. This formal law may 
be defined as the continuous progress of the material 
universe by the unfqlding of latent potentialities through 
the action of incident forces in harmony with a pre-or- 
dained end, such unfolding exhibiting a change from 
indefinite incoherent homogeneity to definite coherent 
heterogeneity." * 

It was before observed, that reason shows us that phe- 
nomenal changes, even if eternal, require an eternal ab- 
solute cause. It shows it us thus : The principle of 
causality teaches us that everything must be absolute or 
caused. Science reveals to us an indefinite series of 
passed phenomenal changes, but points to no beginning. 
Reason does not affirm that such changes may not have 
proceeded in cycles from all eternity, owing to an eternal 
collection of causal factors. If such collocation and 
factors be the absolute, we have pantheism, which is to be 
refuted by a priori demonstrations of reason as well as 

* " Lessons from Nature," p. 361. 



Philosophic Evolution. 197 

by the positive dicta of our intellect in the sphere of 
morality, revealing to us an absolute distinction between 
good and evil, which pantheism necessarily denies. If 
such collocation and factors be not the absolute, they are 
caused (that they are really fortuitous would probably be 
asserted by none of our modern school of philosophy, 
and this alternative may be neglected as absurd and ob- 
solete). If such collocation and factors be caused, they 
cannot be caused by the whole sum of the phenomenal 
series, since this is the effect ; still less by any part of it. 
They must, then, be caused by something external to the 
series and to the collocation of causal factors. " But if the 
phenomenal universe be eternal, this cause must be 
eternal. It must be absolute, as the cause of everything 
phenomenal and relative. It must be orderly and intelli- 
gent, as the cause of an orderly series of phenomena 
which reveals to us an objective intelligence in the bee 
and ant, not that of such animals themselves, but which 
harmonises with, and is recognised by, our own intellect."* 
It must be adequate to produce all the phenomena w r hich 
have been produced — amongst them power, intelligence, 
morality, and will ; in other words, it must be God. 

This Divine First Cause thus recognised by our intellect 
as necessarily existing, is more or less qualitatively re- 
vealed to us in the material universe according as we 

* Op. cit, p. 358. 



198 Contemporary Evolution. 

extend the sphere of our observations. It is concealed 
most completely when the inanimate creation is alone 
considered. It seems to assume a pantheistic form 
when we rise no higher than the brute creation. If 
man alone occupies our attention, a narrow anthropo- 
morphic deism may be the result ; but from a sympa- 
thetic study of the whole universe — the mineral, vegetable, 
animal, and human creations, including intellect, morality, 
and will, — the conception of Almighty God becomes fully 
revealed to the humaa intellect. 

The process of evolution, as carried through the ma- 
terial world, shows us the evolution from potentiality into 
actuality of successively new forms. We cannot imagine 
how they are produced ; we simply recognise that they 
are. In passing to the vegetable world from the mineral 
kingdom, we behold, for the first time manifested, a 
vital form. In passing to the animal world from the 
vegetable kingdom, we behold, for the first time mani- 
fested, a sentient form. In passing to the human world 
from the kingdom of brute animals, we behold, for the 
first time manifested, a rational form. 

With our entrance on the world of self-conscious rea- 
son and free volition, we impinge upon another order of 
being from that revealed to us by all below it — an order 
of being which the cosmical universe, as it were, inter- 
sects, as the different lines of cleavage and stratification 
may intersect in the same rock. 



Philosophic Evolution. 199 

The mingling of the hyperphysical world of rationality 
with the irrational creation is paralleled by the existence 
of crystals in plants, and by the action of the vegetable 
kingdom in modifying the results of merely physical 
and chemical laws. 

Such mingling is again paralleled by the action of 
plants on animals and of animals on plants (as, e.g., the 
necessity of insect-life for the fertilisation of many, and 
even for the nutrition of some plants), such fertilising 
action, perhaps, even occasioning important variations. 

Modern science convincingly shows us that truth which 
St. Thomas taught centuries ago — that a successively in- 
creasing purpose runs through the irrational creation up 
to man. Cosmical entities and their laws do serve organic 
being more than inorganic, sentient being more than 
insentient, rational being more than sentient. Therefore, 
if the First Cause wills at all, He must have willed most 
service to man of all known creatures. 

This increase of service (and consequent dependence) 
becomes manifest when we consider the following truths : 

" The inorganic world can do without the organic, but 
not vice versa. The vegetable world can exist without 
the animal, but not vice versa. The animal world can 
do without the rational world as experienced by us, but 
not vice versa. Therefore, if there is intention at all, all 
things are for man in the chief degree. 

" The same law of progress extends through the evolu- 



200 Contemporary Evolution. 

tion of human society. In politics, in law, in science, in 
art, and in religion,* we find the same law of evolution 
— continuity and final causality resulting in the mani- 
festation of increasingly stable and definite varieties of 
being." "f" 

IV. The last and supremely important result of 
modern philosophical controversies is the vividness with 
which they force on the many a higher appreciation of 
the awful, the inconceivable majesty of God, under the 
irrational term " the Unknowable." Certainly, however, 
nothing said on this subject by Mr. Spencer or by any 
other agnostic writer has not in effect been said over 
and over again by theologians of early, mediaeval, and 
recent times. It is indeed amusing to read Mr. Spencer's 
objection to the application of the term "personality" 
to the First Cause as being inadequate, as if in so 
saying he had said anything new or important. 

If he had only inquired, he would have found that 
every tyro in theology knows that not even " being " 
can be predicated univocally of God and creatures, 
while the special term hyperhypostasis is one familiar 
to theologians as denoting the supreme Personality, and 
is used to distinguish It from every subordinate and 
dependent personality. For all this, it cannot be denied 

* See Dr. Newman's great work, "An Essay on the Development 
of Christian Doctrine." 
f " Lessons from Nature," p. 360. 



Philosophic Evolution. 201 

that grossly inadequate and absurdly anthropomorphic 
conceptions of God are far too common, while popular 
preachers or writers, by their inaccurate language, tend 
to spread yet farther such grossness and absurdity. Of 
course, after all, the difference between our highest con- 
ceptions of God and those of the rudest boor are as 
nothing compared with the difference between such 
highest conceptions and the Divine reality. Nevertheless, 
although our conceptions of God cannot be appreciably 
raised when viewed in relation to Him, yet in relation 
to ourselves they of course can be ; and it is a very 
great gain to us to obtain and spread abroad in any 
way a somewhat higher and less inadequate notion of 
the being and nature of our Almighty Creator. 

Now the controversy respecting " the Unknowable " 
must tend in this direction, and therefore really helps 
to promote that very theology which agnostics would 
fain abolish. 

We may reasonably hope, with respect to many 
of these opponents of theology, that their opposition 
may be due rather to ignorance than to malice, and to 
want of acquaintance with the conception of God really 
entertained by Christian theologians. It may thus not 
be out of place to cite here the following passage, in 
which one of the most widely revered priests of our 
own country now living expresses the teaching of the 
Christian religion in this matter. 



202 Contemporary Evolution. 

He tells us that : 

"As in the human frame there is a living principle, 
acting upon it and through it by means of volition ; so, 
behind the veil of the visible universe there is an in- 
visible, intelligent Being, acting on and through it, 
as and when He will. This invisible Agent is in no 
sense a soul of the world, after the analogy of human 
nature ; but, on the contrary, is absolutely distinct from 
the world, as being its Creator, Upholder, Governor, and 
Sovereign Lord. Here we are at once brought into the 
circle of doctrines which the idea of God embodies. I 
mean, then, by the Supreme Being, one who is simply 
self-dependent, and the only being who is such ; more- 
over, that He is without beginning, or eternal, and the 
only eternal ; that in consequence He has lived a whole 
eternity by Himself; and hence that He is all-sufficient 
for His own blessedness, and all blessed, and ever blessed. 
Further, I mean a Being who, having these prerogatives, 
has the supreme good, or rather is the supreme good, 
or has all the attributes of good in infinite greatness ; all 
wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all 
beautifulness ; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omni- 
present ; ineffably one, absolutely perfect ; and such, that 
what we do not know, and cannot even imagine of Him, 
is far more wonderful than what we do and can. I mean, 
one who is sovereign over His own will and actions, 
though always according to the eternal rule of right and 



Philosophic Evolution. 203 

wrongs which is Himself. I mean, moreover, that He 
created all things out of nothing, and preserves them 
every moment, and could destroy them as easily as He 
made them ; and that, in consequence, He is separated 
from them by an abyss, and is incommunicable in all His 
attributes. And further, He has stamped upon all things, 
in the hour of their creation, their respective natures, and 
has given them their work and mission and their length 
of days, greater or less, in their appointed place. I mean, 
too, that He is ever present with His works, one by one, 
and confronts everything He has made by His particular 
and most loving Providence, and manifests Himself to 
each according to its needs ; and on rational beings has 
imprinted the moral law, and given them power to obey 
it, imposing on them the duty of worship and service, 
searching and scanning them through and through with 
His omniscient eye, and putting before them a present 
trial and a judgment to come. 

"Such is what theology teaches about God, a doctrine, 
as the very idea of its subject matter presupposes, so 
mysterious as in 'its fulness to lie beyond any system, 
and to seem even in parts to be irreconcilable with itself, 
the imagination being unable to embrace what the reason 
determines. It teaches of a Being infinite, yet personal ; 
all blessed, yet ever operative ; absolutely separate from 
the creature, yet in every part of the creation at every 
moment ; above all things, yet under everything. It 



204 Contemporary Evolution. 

teaches of a Being who, though the highest, yet in the 
work of creation, conservation, government, retribution, 
makes Himself, as it were, the minister and servant of 
all ; who, though inhabiting eternity, allows Himself to 
take an interest, and to feel a sympathy, in the matters 
of space and time. His are all beings, visible and in- 
visible, the noblest and the vilest of them ; His are the sub- 
stance, and the operation, and the results of that system 
of physical nature into which we are born ; His, too, are 
the powers and achievements of the intellectual essences, 
on which He has bestowed an independent action and 
the gift of organisation. 

" The laws of the universe, the principles of truth, the 
relation of one thing to another, their qualities and 
virtues, the order and harmony of the whole, all that 
exists, is from Him ; and, if evil is not from Him, as 
assuredly it is not, this is because evil has no substance 
of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or 
corruption of that which has. All we see, hear, and touch, 
the remote sidereal firmament, as well as our own sea 
and land, and the elements which compose them, and 
the ordinances they obey, are His. The primary atoms of 
matter, their properties, their mutual action, their dis- 
position and collocation, electricity, magnetism, gravita- 
tion, light, and whatever other subtle principles or opera- 
tions the wit of man is detecting or shall detect, are the 
works of His hands. From Him has been every move- 



Philosophic Evolution. 205 

ment which has convulsed and refashioned the surface of 
the earth. 

"The most insignificant or unsightly insect is from Him, 
and good in its kind ; the ever teeming, inexhaustible 
swarms of animalculae, the myriads of living motes in- 
visible to the naked eye, the restless, ever spreading vege- 
tation which creeps like a garment over the whole earth, 
the lofty cedar, the umbrageous banana, are His. His 
are the tribes and families of birds and beasts, their 
graceful forms, their wild gestures, and their passionate 
cries. And so in the intellectual, moral, social, and 
political world. Man, with his motives and works, his 
languages, his propagation, his diffusion, is from Him. 
Agriculture, medicine, and the arts of life, are His gifts. 
Society, laws, government, He is their sanction. The 
pageant of earthly royalty has the semblance and the 
benediction of the Eternal King. Peace and civilisation, 
commerce and adventure, wars when just, conquest when 
humane and necessary, have His co-operation and His 
blessing upon them. The course of events, the revolu- 
tion of empires, the rise and fall of states, the periods 
and eras, the progresses and the retrogressions of the 
world's history, not indeed the incidental sin, over 
abundant as it is, but the great outlines and the issues 
of human affairs, are from His dispositions. The elements 
and types and seminal principles and constructive powers 
of the moral world, in ruins though it be, are to be 



2o6 Conte7nporary Evohition. 



referred to Him. He ' enlighteneth every man that 
cometh into this world/ His are the dictates of the 
moral sense, and the retributive reproaches of conscience. 
To Him must be ascribed the rich endowments of the 
intellect, the radiation of genius, the imagination of the ' 
poet, the sagacity of the politician, the wisdom (as Scrip- 
ture calls it) which now rears and decorates the Temple, 
now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The old 
saws of nations, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the 
luminous maxims of law, the oracles of individual wisdom, 
the traditionary rules of truth and justice and religion, 
even though imbedded in the corruption, or alloyed with 
the pride, of the world, bespeak His original agency, 
and His long suffering presence. Even where there is 
habitual rebellion against Him, or profound, far-spreading 
social depravity, still the undercurrent, or the heroic out- 
burst of natural virtue, as well as the yearning of the 
heart after what it has not, and its presentiment of its 
remedies, are to be ascribed to the Author of all good. 
Anticipations or reminiscences of His glory haunt the 
mind of the self-sufficient sage and of the pagan devotee ; 
His writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian fane 
or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, He 
all but concurs, according to His good pleasure, and in 
His selected season, in the issues of unbelief, superstition, 
and false worship, and changes the character of acts by 
His overruling operation. He condescends, though He 



Philosophic Evolution. 207 

gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture, 
and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries. 
He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises 
Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the 
Messias by the tongue of the sybil, forces python to 
recognise His ministers, and baptises by the hand of 
the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his 
denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries 
of Divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly 
legends of a popular mythology He casts His shadow, and 
is dimly discerned in the ode or the epic, as in troubled 
water or in fantastic dreams. All that is good, all that is 
true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great 
or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as 
supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from Him" 
(" Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University 
Education," pp. 91-97). 

From all the foregoing considerations, minds tolerably 
free from prejudice can hardly fail to deduce certain 
practical conclusions. 

1. Worshippers of God are often reproached with seek- 
ing to influence their Deity to unduly favour them by the 
use of flattery ; while yet (it is urged) no mere man, if 
good, would allow himself to be influenced by praises or 
abject entreaties, or by expressions of reverence and self- 
abasement, whether by word or gesture. But any one who 
has gone through the modern controversy as to " the 



208 Contemporary Evolution. 

Unknowable " must logically admit that this reproach and 
this argument are nothing less than absurd. He must 
recognise that there is no parity whatever between praise, 
entreaty, and reverence as addressed to man, and praise, 
entreaty, and reverence as addressed to God. It is con- 
temptible to flatter men, because it is wrong, and con- 
temptible to say that which we know not to be true ; 
but to flatter God is simply impossible. Reverence of 
an extreme kind paid to man is contemptible, because 
it is a mode of lying, of asserting a disparity and a 
superiority which in truth do not exist ; but with God 
it is quite otherwise. No Oriental prostrations can 
even approximately express the reverence with which 
reason declares it fitting for a creature to approach his 
Creator, regard being had to that Creator's majesty 
alone. A worship which by every outward expression 
should denote a reverence and adoration such as no 
words could declare would, from this point of view, 
surely be that which could alone deserve the epithet of 
rational 

2. The recognition of God's inconceivable greatness, 
joined with our clear perception of all that is implied in 
our own free will, must force on the student of this 
modern controversy a special apprehension of the nature 
of opposition to Him. If "the Unknowable" be all 
that we are told It is, — if, in other words, God exists, 
a Being of absolute beauty and holiness, it follows as a 



Philosophic Evohttion. 209 

necessary consequence that no other evil can be so great 
as to be even for a moment comparable with that of a 
deliberate or habitual denial of worship, or any other act 
of rebellion against Him. Another consequence also 
becomes plain ; namely, the culpability of those who are 
careless and indifferent, not caring to inquire seriously 
and deeply into the truths of religion. Nay, a state 
of mind which enters upon such an inquiry with the 
same placidity that befits an inquiry into some purely 
historical or critical problem is also blameworthy. It 
is blameworthy, because a will rightly directed cannot 
but lead its possessor to most earnestly desire that the 
doctrines of natural religion (the existence of an all 
holy God, the rewarder in another world of those who 
strive to follow the dictates of conscience here) may 
prove to be true. The absence of such desire, then, is 
in itself a sufficient proof of a bad will. The Author of 
nature declares to us, through our reason, what, as the 
Author of grace, He declares through revelation, that 
" He that is not with Me, is against Me ; and he that 
gathereth not with Me, scattereth. ,, 

It thus appears that the true line to be drawn as regards 
men is between those who have and those who have not 
a will to adore, love, and serve God. This is taught by 
the Church in allowing the possibility of salvation to all 
who, being through no fault of theirs ignorant of revela- 
tion, simply w T orship a Dens unus et remunerator, and in 
10 



210 Contemporary Evolution. 

affirming that one pure mental act of love of God alone, 
or with contrition if needed, suffices for justification. 
Tender consideration and loving sympathy are due to 
all who reject revealed religion because they cannot see 
how it accords with their notions of God's perfections. 
But, unhappily, it is impossible to doubt but that there 
are men who reject all divine worship because they 
will submit to no being whatever, and who even pass on 
to " hate God " with all their heart, with all their soul, 
with all their mind, and with all their strength ; thus 
beginning, even in this world, a hatred of their Creator 
which may exist eternally. 

3. These considerations, as the present writer has else- 
where * observed, cannot but bring home to the student 
how evidently true is the saying that God's ways cannot 
be as our ways, and how, therefore, " the action which 
we discover immanent in the material universe may be 
rationally taken to be from God. In that universe we 
find an action the results of which harmonise with man's 
reason, which is orderly, which disaccords with the action 
of blind chance and with the i fortuitous concourse of 
atoms * of Democritus ; but, at the same time, an action 
which ever, in part and in ultimate analysis, eludes our 
grasp, and the modes of which are different from those 
by which we should have attempted to accomplish such 

* " Lessons from Nature," p. 374. 



Philosophic Evolution. 211 

ends. The inconsistency is surely very great of those 
who assert that all our knowledge comes from experience, 
and at the same time that 'creative action ' is incredible, 
because nature affords no evidence of it. It is so great, 
because that action must necessarily be unperceived and 
uncomprehended by us, since of creative action we have 
and can have no experience whatever. The action of God 
must necessarily be unimaginable by us in its fulness, but 
its reality and efficiency can be very clearly conceived as 
incessant and universal in every form of being known to 
us. God is thus neither withdrawn from nor identified 
with His material creation, and no part of it is left devoid 
of meaning or of purpose. The poet's plaint as to the 
flower ' born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on 
the desert air' is thus manifestly uncalled for — every 
creature of every order of existence being ever, while 
its existence is sustained, so complacently contemplated 
by God, that the intense and concentrated attention of all 
men of science together upon it could but form an utterly 
inadequate symbol of such divine contemplation." 

4. There is yet one more practical consideration which 
this controversy seems well fitted to bring home vividly 
to the student of it ; namely, the question of " wor- 
ship." The consistent evolutionist, who fully apprehends 
the great principle of continuity, must recognise the ut- 
ter hopelessness of any one inventing de novo a form of 
worship of "the Unknowable" capable of satisfying the 



2 12 Contemporary Evolution. 

intellectual, moral, and aesthetic tendencies of men of 
culture. Perceiving the fact that the ascending process 
of evolution is " integrating " and not " disintegrating," 
and that, speaking broadly and on the whole, the later 
developments are superior to the earlier, it seems inevi- 
table that the rational and consistent evolutionist should 
go to mass. 

Recognising " the Unknowable " as everywhere pre- 
sent in nature, the evolutionist must recognise that a 
fitting worship shall embrace as wide a field of exist- 
ences and activities as is compatible with historical 
evolution. He will not affect to despise the senses and 
emotions any more than the intellect as involved in 
such worship ; rather, being impressed (as a follower of 
Herbert Spencer) with the vivid permeability of those 
channels which lead to irreligious emotions, he will see 
the reasonableness of facilitating religious emotion by 
supplying it with easily permeable channels, and of 
bringing in as much as possible instead of excluding 
vivid sensations. 

In the various fragmentary relics of the Church's wor- 
ship which have been adopted by the sects, the reason of 
the evolutionist can hardly fail to be tried and irritated 
by a service (which is a product of mere disintegrating 
action) in which worship consists of sentences distinctly 
uttered in the vernacular tongue, followed by a sermon 
with which it is very likely he will have but little sym- 



Philosophic Evolution. 213 

pathy. At mass his intellect, though amply exercised, 
should he so will it, yet need not be tried by the hear- 
ing of a single word from beginning to end. His ses- 
thetical instincts may be gratified by treasures of the 
organic and inorganic worlds, by products of human skill, 
whether of the artisan or the musician, and by the solemn 
movements and stately rhythms of motion incident to 
the sacred rite. His historical sentiments will be grati- 
fied by contemplating a worship essentially the same 
as that spread over our land before these last three 
centuries of repression ; a worship the same as that 
which aided to weld, together Normans and Saxons 
into our English race ; the same as that which has af- 
forded spiritual support to all those the world has 
deemed most holy — to Fenelon, Vincent of Paul, Aqui- 
nas, Francis, and Augustine. Even dimly, as in a glim- 
mering twilight, he may see in the sacred offerings and 
the accompaniments of flowers, of tapers, and of per- 
fumes, suggestions of a past, remote indeed, even of the 
early worship of his primitive Aryan forefathers in their 
Eastern home. The "reasonable service" of Him who 
is at once the source and maintainer of all evolution 
from the merely physical to that of human society 
should surely have this harmonious universality of cha- 
racter. If " the Unknowable/' if Almighty God is to be 
worshipped at all, the consistent evolutionist must surely 
deem that worship to be most fitting which has thus 



214 Contemporary Evolution. 

from century to century grown on and on in one pro- 
gressive process of increasing integration. The evolu- 
tionist, recognising the First Cause everywhere, and also 
(if a consistent follower of Mr. Spencer) recognising the 
need of religion, must require a real worship of pro- 
found, at least mentally prostrate, adoration of that 
Cause as actually present here and now. Such a one 
could not surely find a more fitting mode of worship 
than the one suggested. Being himself a creature under 
conditions of space and time, and necessitated to frame 
his thoughts according to such conditions, he must wor- 
ship, if he worship at all, the First Cause under those 
limitations. In joining in worship at the elevation of 
the host he cannot err, since, as he admits his Deity 
everywhere, he must surely be also THERE. Nay, he 
must needs admit that He is emphatically and super- 
eminently there in that which is the centre of devotion 
to those present, and which has been the centre of 
devotion and worship of all the holiest souls the world 
has seen for many centuries past. 

But if the follower of Herbert Spencer, convinced of 
the existence of an inconceivably high First Cause, which, 
from reverence alone, he refrains from calling personal, 
should so assist at the Church's highest act of worship, 
every doubter as to theism may rationally also so assist. 
In offering a hypothetical worship such doubter palters 
with no truth, but only manifests his goodwill to perform 



Philosophic Evolution. 215 

a duty, should the existence of such duty be a reality, as 
to which, by the hypothesis, he is in a state of uncer- 
tainty. If he is sincerely desirous of having his doubts 
resolved, surely he must feel convinced that such a 
manifestation of goodwill can have no other than a 
beneficial effect (supposing a personal First Cause 
exists) while in no case can it harm or degrade him, 
since he is not supposed to give any assent to that 
which he does not really accept, but being confessedly 
in a state of doubt, he offers only a hypothetical wor- 
ship, such as should rationally accompany the existence 
of such doubt, though not, of course, the existence of a 
state of positive and absolute negation, such as hardly 
any modern English philosopher openly avows. 

Glancing backwards over the course we have tra- 
versed, it seems borne in upon us that the logical 
development of that process which Philip . the Fair 
began is probably advancing, however slowly, to a re- 
sult very generally unforeseen. But if such result as 
that here indicated be the probable outcome of philoso- 
phical evolution, Christianity has once more evidently 
nothing whatever to fear from it. A philosophy which 
as a complement unites in one all other systems, will 
harmonise with a Religion which as a complement syn- 
thesises all other religions, and not only religions pro- 
perly so-called, but atheism also. 

Atheism, pantheism, and pure deism running their 



2 1 6 Contemporary Evolution. 

logical course, and mutually refuting each other, find an 
ultimate synthesis in Christianity, as we have before found 
them to do in nature. Christianity affirms the truth 
latent in atheism, namely, that God, as He is, is un- 
imaginable and inscrutable by us ; in other words, no such 
God as we can imagine exists. It also affirms the truth 
in pantheism, that God acts in every action of every 
created thing, and that in Him we live and move and are. 
Finally, it also asserts the truth of deism, but by its other 
assertions escapes the objections to which deism by itself 
is liable from opposing systems. Similarly, Christianity 
also effects a synthesis between theism and the worship 
of humanity, and that by the path not of destruction, but 
through the nobler conception of " taking the manhood 
into God." 

It may be well to conclude this chapter by a retrospect. 

Our investigations concerning social, political, scientific, 
and philosophic evolution have but led us to what we 
might have a priori anticipated — the conclusion that the 
highest and most intellectual power is that which must 
ultimately dominate the inferior forces. Neither political 
nor scientific developments can avail against the necessary 
consequences of philosophical evolution. No mistake can 
be greater than that of supposing that philosophy is but 
a mental luxury for the few. An implicit, unconscious 
philosophy possesses the mind and influences the conduct 
of every peasant. Metaphysical doctrines, sooner or later, 



Philosophic Evolution. 2 1 7 

filter down from the cultured few to the lowest social 
strata, and become, for good or ill, the very marrow of 
the bones, first of a school, then of a society, ultimately 
of a nation. The course of general philosophy, it is here 
contended, is now returning to its legitimate channel after 
a divergence of some three centuries' duration. This re- 
turn cannot affect prejudicially the Christian Church, but 
must strengthen and aid it, and thus that beneficial action 
upon it of political and scientific evolution, before repre- 
sented as probable, will be greatly intensified, and the 
great movement of the RENAISSANCE hereafter take its 
place as the manifestly efficient promoter of a new de- 
velopment of the Christian organism such as the first 
twenty centuries of its life afforded it no opportunity to 
manifest. 



CHAPTER VI. 

^ESTHETIC EVOLUTION. 

T F the reasoning hereinbefore put forward is correct, the 
influences of social, political, scientific, and philo- 
sophical evolution can have no other ultimate effect than 
that of strengthening and advancing the Christian Church. 
It might then be expected by the reader that a further 
question should next be considered, namely, one concern- 
ing that evolution of religion itself which is now taking 
place around us — its antecedents, its present action, its 
results ; and this would form a most deeply interesting 
subject of inquiry. For the Christian religion claims to 
be not the true religion, but simply religion — the only 
religion which ever was, is, or shall be. The patent fact 
that various forms of heathenism have existed, exist, and 
will for a time continue to exist, is not of course denied ; 
but it is asserted that all these religions differ from the 
Christian as being fragmentary, distorted, and therefore 
misleading representations of the one great truth conveyed 
to us in its entirety by Christianity, just as the Church 
itself differs from the sects as being the synthesis of all 
those truths they severally hold. The religion of the 
Christian Church claims to differ from all other systems, 
heathen or Christian, not as one coloured ray of light 



Esthetic Evolution. 219 

differs from another — the violet from the red of the solar 
spectrum, — but as white light differs from all the coloured 
lights as being the synthesis resulting from their har- 
monious blending in one perfect unity. 

Now were we to treat of the process of religious evolu- 
tion which we see going on about us, that process might 
be regarded as it takes place within and without the great 
Christian organism. But the evolutionary process within 
the Church has been once for all elucidated with a master 
hand by Dr. Newman in his great work on " The Develop- 
ment of Christian Doctrine ; " and it is well worthy of 
remark, that this contribution to the great theory of 
evolution was one of the first. Its sagacious author antici- 
pated the doctrines of Spencer, of Darwin, and of Haeckel, 
though he restrained their application strictly within the 
area of his proper subject. It should not be forgotten by 
those who esteem so highly the doctrine of evolution, that 
almost the first, and perhaps the most solid and enduring 
contribution towards it, was in the domain of theology, 
and by one of the most uncompromising supporters of 
sacerdotalism and the supernatural. 

It would be presumptuous for one who is no theologian 
to attempt to follow in such footsteps. It will be enough 
to observe that the generation which has gone by since 
that era-marking work appeared has apparently justified 
its assertions and predictions. The culmination of the 
process has been the great Vatican decree, the keystone 



220 Contemporary Evolution. 

of the great arch of civil and religious liberty, — a decree 
which Germany now proves to us to have been dictated 
by a more than mortal prescience. 

As to the characters presented by contemporary reli- 
gious evolution outside the Church, we have already, in the 
first chapter, pointed out that the religious disruption of 
the sixteenth century resulted in two distinct yet inter- 
mixed processes and tendencies. One of these was sim- 
ply distinctive and pagan, and has ended in the wide- 
spread negation of all religion which we see in Germany 
to-day. The other was the formation of the various sects, 
such as Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Puritanism, 
etc., etc. In the present day it is sufficiently obvious 
that these various religious bodies are undergoing a more 
or less slow process of disruption and dissolution, and 
their adherents tending, with greater or less rapidity, 
either towards anti-theism on the one hand or towards 
the Church upon the other. 

Closely connected, however, with the evolution of reli- 
gion is that of aesthetic evolution ; and this essay may 
perhaps be fitly closed by an endeavour to pourtray some 
few of the probable effects of the great modern movement 
of contemporary evolution upon Christian art. 

It is generally admitted that art has been profoundly 
affected by Christianity. The effect was indeed gradual, and 
the changes which have taken place from the second and 
third century have been due to the action of many other 



^Esthetic Evolution. 2 2 1 

causes also, but it cannot be contested but that Christ- 
ianity has been at least one of the most important of 
them. Christian art as regards architecture culminated in 
the thirteenth century. Sculpture and painting continued 
to develop at the least until the end of the sixteenth cen- 
tury ; but as they gained in natural beauty they lost the 
Christian inspiration, and the nature of the artistic move- 
ment of the Renaissance has been already noted in the 
first chapter.* 

Now the greatest lover of Christian art, if he is candid 
cannot deny the various imperfections of its early and 
mediaeval efforts, nor the great improvement and advance 
which in many respects marked the reappearance of the 
pagan spirit in art. 

Are we then to anticipate a complete severance between 
high art and Christian symbolism of all kinds ; or may 
we hope that the decay of Christian art has been but the 
prelude to its reappearance in a more perfect condition 
hereafter, as the break up of the harmony of the grub or 
larva into the discord of the chrysalis or pupa, results in 
the more perfect harmony of the imago, or butterfly ? 

In the present day we have seen a great reaction against 
the Renaissance movement,— architecturally in modern 
gothic, pictorially in the school of Overbeck and pre- 
Raphaelism, and musically in a return to Palestrina and 

* See ante, page 24. 



222 Contemporary Evolution. 

Gregorian Church singing. In sculpture, the reversion 
has been less marked, yet it may be traced in many mon- 
umental effigies. 

Still, nothing we have yet seen is, it must be confessed, 
very encouraging. In order that this artistic evolution 
should follow the general law, it should present us with 
examples of a progress from a comparatively undiffer- 
entiated and simple beginning to a complex and hetero- 
geneous result. 

Now as regards 'MUSIC, the very controversies which 
take place about it show that we have arrived at a new 
conception ; namely, the appropriateness of different styles 
for different purposes. When the Gregorian style was 
young, it was the general style of the day, and had no 
special sacredness. 

Similarly, the styles which succeeded were forms of 
the fashion of their period, and the praises of love or 
wine were celebrated in the same manner as the praise of 
Christ and His saints. We have, then, now a new idea to 
work upon, with immensely enriched materials, and music 
is becoming curiously and deliberately Christian in a way 
it never was before. Gregorian singing and the music of 
Palestrina are made use of with a distinctly Christian 
feeling and intention ; and however different may be the 
musical expression of the Christian religious sentiment in 
the time to come, the foundations of its distinctness are 
already laid, and its differentiation is determined. 



Aesthetic Evolution. 223 



In PAINTING, the beauty as to devotional expression 
and religious conception of Fra Angelico and painters 
of kindred schools was of course marred by a defective 
knowledge of anatomy and many technical defects. Yet 
how superior are such works in religious expression to 
later works, in other respects so superior ! The process 
of evolution in this art has now already given us two 
distinct styles — sources of endless enjoyment — the land- 
scape and the historical picture. The third style, the 
religious, is yet in embryo ; but we have already its 
conception — the idea of painting consciously Christian, 
and separate from other styles to a degree never thought 
of before, yet making use of all the improvements 
which the last three centuries have introduced. 

Nevertheless, purely realistic painting and naturalism, 
most suitable for landscape and historical subjects, are 
now recognised as inappropriate, save as regards subor- 
dinate details, in attempts to pourtray what is infinitely 
beyond human imagination. Purely religious subjects, it 
is recognised, can only be pourtrayed symbolically ; and 
in order so to pourtray them, more may be learnt from 
the devotional treatment and expression of earlier days 
than from the artistic triumphs of later centuries. 

Precisely the same considerations apply to SCULPTURE. 
A development of this art may well, however, take place 
in connection with religion beyond anything seen in 
former days. It may do so, because when the absurdity 



224 Contemporary Evolution. 

of trying to do away with sacred images and image 
worship is fully realised, the use of such may be expected 
greatly to increase. The absurdity of trying to do with- 
out images will be appreciated at its just value when the 
spread of philosophy will have made it axiomatic that 
we cannot even think but by the help of sensible images 
in our minds. The most rigid Puritan, the strictest Ma- 
hometan, cannot worship without worshipping images — 
the images of his own imagination formed by his own 
brain — images in our own day far from likely to be taken 
for realities (taken as objectively agreeing with what they 
represent), and therefore far more misleading than any 
solid images of wood or stone, against the adequacy of 
which, as representatives of the divine, we are fully on 
our guard. 

In ARCHITECTURE again we have now developed a dis- 
tinction which certainly did not exist in mediaeval times 
— that between sacred and secular buildings. Then all 
buildings were essentially of one style, and the refectory, 
or hall of justice, if of sufficient dimensions, might hardly 
be distinguishable from the nave of a church. The form, 
however, which church architecture should assume is a 
matter of keen debate, and mostly between the advo- 
cates of the pointed style and those who admire modern 
Italian architecture for church purposes. The arguments 
by which these two views are supported have been put 
forward in two articles which appeared in the Dublin Re- 



^Esthetic Evolution. 225 

view,- and a consideration of them, as types of two 
schools, may serve to bring forward the author's views 
as to the probable effect of the progress of modern 
evolution on Christian church architecture. 

The first of these articles was by an author who signed 
himself H. W. B., and it appeared in the April number 
of the Dublin Review for 1872. The second article ap- 
peared in the January number of the succeeding year. 
The first article advocated the employment of the 
" gothic " style in our church architecture. The second 
article gave the preference very decidedly to the " Italian/' 

H. W. B. advances the following arguments in favour of 
the employment of " gothic" in our churches : — (1) It was 
re-introduced amongst Catholics by the great and good 
Bishop Milner; (2) it is the only architecture which has 
originated under Christian influences ; (3) it is the style 
at present popular for ecclesiastical buildings ; (4) it is 
capable of adaptation to all needs ; (5) its use is now 
widely diffused over both hemispheres ; (6) it is cheap. 
The writer further controverts the allegations of such 
anti-goths as maintain: — (1) That gothic is anti-Roman; 
(2) that it causes the obstruction of church interiors by 
too many columns; (3) that gothic churches are dark-; 
(4) that they are cold ; (5) that their constructive peculi- 
arities cause the altar to be hidden from a large part of 
the congregation. In opposition to these five assertions, 
H. W. B. contends : — (1) That, far from being anti-Roman, 



226 Contemporary Evolution. 

gothic is adopted by the zealous and uncompromising 
ultramontanes of Germany and Holland ; (2) that many 
columns and narrow naves are by no means necessary 
features of gothic (instancing the cathedrals of Alby and 
Angers, seventy feet wide, that of Angouleme without 
columns, and that of Terragona, in Spain, eighty feet 
wide) ; (3) that gothic is the style which is par excellence 
capable of admitting light, some of its structures being 
almost all window, while Italian churches, like St. Paul's, 
alone of English cathedrals, is incapable of being photo- 
graphed internally ; (4) that gothic churches can just as 
easily be made warm as Italian ones ; and (5) that the 
altar can as easily be made visible to the congregation in 
gothic as in any other style of architecture. This writer, 
on the other hand, fully admits that a real and complete 
Italian church is a fine and noble thing, but contends that 
those generally built (or likely to be built by us in England 
now) resemble mere unsightly rooms. Expense alone, he 
asserts, would prevent the erection of really fine Italian 
churches in England, an elaborate stucco ceiling (like that 
of S. Peter in Montorio, in Rome) being likely to cost 
more than would a stone vault, even if that stone were 
marble. 

The other writer, the advocate of " Italian " church 
architecture, opposes H. W. B., and replies to the follow- 

* Dublin Review, January, 1873, Art. v., p. 105. 



^Esthetic Evolution. 227 

ing effect. He begins by conceding* that there is no 
force in those five objections to gothic just noticed as 
anti-Roman, over-columned, dark, cold, or hiding the 
altar. These concessions are, however, followed by the 
following hostile assertions : — He says (1) that gothic 
churches are ill adapted to the existing exigencies of 
Catholic worship; (2) that they are unsuited to the use 
of paintings ; (3) that they are also unfavourable to the 
use of sacred images, which latter were, he asserts, in 
gothic architecture too much subordinated to architectu- 
ral features ; his chief contention, however, is (4) that 
a majestic "unity" finds expression in almost every 
Italian church, while in gothic ones unity is lost in mul- 
tiplicity of detail and complexity of design. He asserts 
again and again that a church should be the material 
expression of a divine religious unity which can be ap- 
prehended " at one glance," — that it should be well 
adapted to the most recent developments of ritual, and 
especially harmonious with the modern religious develop- 
ments of the pictorial and plastic arts. He also main- 
tains that an Italian church need not cost more than a 
similarly sized gothic one ; and to the affirmation that 
a common structure of the former style is a mere 
"room," he rejoins by stigmatising an inferior gothic one 
as a mere " barn." 

Now it is not probable that the first of these writers 
would deny the needfulness of the positive characters 



228 Contemporary Evohttion. 

for which the second writer contends, nor that the second 
would repudiate the advantages desiderated by the first. 
We may therefore venture to combine their requirements 
as to the style of architecture really suited for a Christian 
church. They will be as follows : — (i) That it should be 
connected with saintly memories of the past ; (2) that 
it should have originated and have been greatly modified 
through Christian influences ; (3) that it should be widely 
acceptable ; (4) that it should be capable of adaptation 
to varied circumstances ; (5) that it should not be anti- 
Roman ; (6) that it should be exactly fitted to our 
existing modes of worship ; (7) that it should not neces- 
sitate too many columns ; (8) that it should not exclude 
a due amount of light ; (9) that it should not render 
heating exceptionally difficult ; (10) that it should 
manifest one predominant idea and exhibit an impres- 
sive unity ; (11) that it should afford good spaces for 
the effective exhibition of paintings; (12) that it should 
harmonise with the use of sacred images according to 
existing modes ; (13) that it should not be extraordinarily 
expensive. To these requirements I would venture to 
add : (14) that it should be eminently rational as well 
as beautiful, so as to be a fitting shrine for our " reason- 
able service." 

By the word "gothic" is here meant the successive 
styles of architecture which prevailed from the very 
earliest " early English " — or its Continental equivalent 



/Esthetic Evolution. 229 

— down to the latest " perpendicular " or " flamboyant." 
But these styles are in many respects so diverse, that 
it is difficult to find for them any common character 
other than that of the employment of the pointed arch, 
which runs through them all in the smallest ornamental 
details as well as in the main constructive features, and 
profoundly modifies and dominates the whole. Thus 
the phrase "the pointed style," so commonly adopted 
to denote what many call "gothic," is one admirably 
chosen for its purpose, the pointed arch being the one 
governing character of all forms of gothic. The word 
"Italian," as here used, denotes that style which has 
prevailed generally, but especially in Italy, from the full 
development of the transitional Renaissance down to the 
revival of pointed architecture. As notable examples 
may be taken S. Peter's, S. Andrea della Valle, and 
the Gesu, of Rome ; S. Paul's, of London ; the 
Pantheon and S. Sulpice, of Paris. For the church 
architecture of this post- mediaeval period it is perhaps 
more difficult to find any positive common character 
than for gothic architecture. Perhaps it may best be 
shortly described as " round-arched," with ornamental 
details copied exclusively from or directly suggested by 
pre-Christian Roman and Greek authorities, with a ten- 
dency to the use of the dome. 

The lovers or advocates of the pointed style may 
well contend that as to the first two of the fourteen 



230 Contemporary Evolution. 

requirements above enumerated it is unrivalled. Cen- 
turies must indeed elapse before any later style can 
boast as many saintly associations as can that one which 
ranged from the birth of S. Bernard to that of S. 
Ignatius. These associations, moreover, have especial 
force in England, owing to the apostasy which syn- 
chronised with the abandonment of that style. Again, 
it is evident that no other style is so emphatically and 
exclusively Christian in its origin. 

It may also be 'fairly maintained that gothic is now 
widely acceptable; but it should not be forgotten there 
is also a wide-spread hostility to its use, and that with 
the very congregation with which the recent spread 
of the Church in England is so signally connected — 
the Oratorian, it does not appear to have found favour. 
Far be it from me to be faint in acknowledging the 
deference due to the judgment of our immortal Bishop 
Milner, but there is another authority equally great on 
the opposite side — that of Dr. Newman. The fourth 
character, adaptability to varied circitmstances y is one in 
which gothic has indeed the advantage over Italian. 
The very essence of gothic is the subordination of means 
to ends ; irregularity and asymmetry, instead of being 
blemishes, add to the very attractiveness and pictur- 
esqueness of the pointed structures which display 
them. Not so with Italian architecture — rigid as to its 
requirements in these respects, all buildings erected in 



Esthetic Evolution. 231 

that style must subordinate all details of arrangement 
to the general design adopted. The next requirement is 
one of extreme importance and of deep significance— 
that, namely, of essential harmony with Rome. 

The arguments brought forward by the first writer are 
forcible enough. It is most true that thorough-going 
ultramontanes in France, Germany, and Holland have 
built in the pointed style, and it may be added even 
the Society of Jesus itself has habitually, as we all 
well know, made use of it in England and elsewhere. 
Nevertheless, there is a mode of favouring gothic which 
is not only anti- Roman but essentially anti-Christian, and 
a danger attends the too eager advocacy of the former 
which in no way attends the most zealous support of 
Italian architecture. 

A strong assertion of the claim of gothic to be the 
" Christian " style, to the exclusion of all others, is al- 
most tantamount to a reproach on the Church for 
having consented to its abandonment in favour of a 
revived " pagan " style. It harmonises with the view 
(so strongly put forward by Michelet in this connection) 
that Christianity culminated at the period of Innocent 
III. and S. Louis — at the time of the purest and most 
perfect gothic architecture, that of the S. Chapelle — and 
that since then Christianity itself has been progres- 
sively decaying and disintegrating. 

But the Christian Church, as has been before said, 



232 Conte7nporary Evolution. 



went forth from the " upper chamber " of Jerusalem 
conquering and to conquer, and though always " mili- 
tant " and never yet " triumphant," her course, in spite 
of apparent superficial reverses, has been in fact a pro- 
gress from victory to victory. Far from failing in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, her Catholicity be- 
came even more manifest, more explicitly developed, and 
more consciously maintained on the part of her spiritual 
children. 

Any position, then, which leads us to view with want 
of sympathy the /^/-mediaeval path of the Church is 
essentially uncatholic in its tendency, and such a view 
seems latent in that exclusive and passionate advocacy 
of the pointed style which has occasionally found ex- 
pression. It seems to indicate the presence of a pre- 
ference for the Church as she was at an earlier period, 
instead of a loyal and undeviating fidelity to the Spouse 
of Christ, as she exhibits herself to us at this day ; and 
it is where the gothic spirit is strongest out of England, 
namely, in Germany and Holland, that the heresy of Rein- 
kens has found both its birthplace and anointing. 

It is not, of course, contended that gothic is es- 
sentially anti-Roman ; but it is contended that it is 
accidentally so, as will again appear in connection with 
the next requirement, namely, fitness for the existing 
ritual. Nothing could have been more admirably adapted 
for the worship to be carried on within them than were 



Esthetic Evolution. 233 

the gothic churches at the time of their erection. Now, 
however, the assistance of the laity at " office " has all 
but ceased ; nor have we, nor are we likely to have, 
troops of canons, regular and secular, to fill the deep 
stalled chancels and vast enclosed choirs of our medi- 
aeval edifices. Almost daily benedictions, frequent ex- 
positions, and prayers recited at the altar's foot, to be 
heard and responded to by the people find in general a 
more suitable and congruous home in an Italian church 
than in a real gothic structure, which is thus again, 
to a certain extent, unavoidably anti-Roman. As to the 
requirement that the interior should not be greatly ob- 
structed by columns, it has been demonstrated by the first 
writer, and admitted by his opponent, that "gothic" by 
no means necessitates its infringement. 

The eighth requirement, that of an adequate supply of 
light, can equally be met by either style. But the mode 
of meeting it is different in both, and seems to the pre- 
sent writer to be objectionable in both. As H. W. B. most 
justly observes, a gothic church may be "all window," 
as is the case with the noble pointed choir added to the 
old Dom of Aachen ; and indeed, the pointed style in 
its fullest development, such as the choir of Beauvais, 
w T ith large lower windows and with double, glazed tri- 
foria as well as clerestory, becomes one enormous lantern. 
Moreover, these pointed windows, with their graceful 

tracery, are beautiful objects in themselves, apart from 
11 



234 Contemporary Evolution. 

the glorious colours which should fill them. Neverthe- 
less it cannot but be unreasonable and contradictory 
to provide immense windows for the admission of light 
and then exclude that very light by the treatment of 
the material with which such windows are glazed ; this 
appears to be a serious objection, in addition to others 
which will shortly be noticed in relation to painted 
windows. Italian architecture is free from this glaring 
irrationality, but then it is at the expense of presenting 
ugly and staring gaps for the admission of light, instead 
of the graceful fenestration of gothic architecture. This 
objectionable Italian feature is also likely to be much 
more offensive and obtrusive in our dull climate than it 
is in Italy, where the exclusion of sunlight is a boon to 
be desired. 

In connection with ^ light " naturally comes "heat"; 
but it is difficult to see how any one style can necessar- 
ily have any advantage over another with regard to afford- 
ing facilities for the admission of manufactured warmth. 

The tenth requirement proposed was that a church 
" should manifest one predominant idea and exhibit an 
impressive unity." I think it must be conceded that 
the advocate of the Italian style is right when he 
says, that on entering an Italian church (say S. Peter's 
or the Gesu), as opposed to a gothic one (say the 
Cathedral of Canterbury or the Abbey Church of West- 
minster), one does receive an impression of majestic unity 



^Esthetic Evohttion. 235 

rather than of awe-inspiring complexity — that all is, as 
he says, " taken in at a glance," instead of offering for 
investigation a series of successive revelations of beauty 
and mystery. But to very many the absence of this 
element is one fatal defect in churches of the " Italian " 
style. How many varied combinations, each as full of 
interest as of beauty, are presented to us by a mag- 
nificent old gothic church, the original complexity of 
which has been increased by the irregular additions 
of succeeding centuries ! At the same time, though it 
would be a grievous loss to give up this rich element of 
surprise and mystery, we need not shrink from admit- 
ting that gothic does leave something to be desired 
a.s to unity, and does often, as in Canterbury, more or 
less impoverish the general effect of a building as a 
whole by excess of subdivision. Most persons would 
surely admit that a combination would be desirable in 
which, while a majestic unity should be the prevailing 
characteristic, a subordinate complexity, presenting un- 
expected mysterious features and varied combinations, 
should by no means be excluded. 

The next desirable feature of a modern church is that 
perhaps in which gothic appears at the greatest dis- 
advantage compared with Italian ; namely, in the space 
it affords for the effective exhibition of paintings. In 
addition to .the relatively small unbroken wall (between 
the many windows and architectural irregularities of sur- 



236 Contemporary Evolution. 

face), the effect of paintings must ever be ruined by the 
brilliant hues of the material with which every window of 
a perfect gothic church should be glazed. Thus, in spite 
of the beauty of stained glass, it has in addition to its 
intrinsic irrationality the grievous disadvantage of marring, 
or rather destroying, the effect of perhaps the most impor- 
tant of the arts which minister to religion. * 

But not painting alone ; sculpture also (as now used 
for purposes of devotion) finds a place more readily and 
harmoniously in an Italian than in a gothic church. 
In the former, holy images can attain both a larger and 
more independent development than the latter, where 
each, closely buried in its niche, assumes a quasi-architec- 
tural character. The second writer referred to goes on 
indeed to add that in the gothic style " the images of our 
Lord and the saints are not representations of our Lord 
who came in the flesh, or of the saints, who were men of 
like passions with ourselves. They are as if ' clothed in 
white samite, mystic, wonderful/ " But this objection 
seems a very unreasonable one. To assert that mediaeval 
sculpture was necessarily defective, from the imperfect 
anatomical knowledge of the period, would be reason- 
able enough ; but to object to images which are to 
suggest to us divine and sanctified beings as they now 
are in glory ', because they are "mystic" and "wonderful," 

* The church of S. Apollinaris at Remagen is a good example of 
the incongruity of gothic with paintings. 



^Esthetic Evolution. 237 

seems to me a mistake. Surely such are the very cha- 
racters which such images should present ! 

Passing by the requirement as to expense, which ap- 
pears to be about equally capable of fulfilment by either 
gothic or Italian, we may pass to the last requirement, 
that, namely, as to the reasonableness which should 
pervade it and should manifest itself in the constructions 
it inspires. In this matter it must be allowed that 
gothic has a most decisive advantage over Italian. Me- 
diaeval architecture has developed with admirable skill 
the art of forming the largest and most durable construc- 
tions with the least expenditure of material. It may be 
called emphatically the most rationalistic and truthful 
system of stone construction which the world has yet 
witnessed. That canon for which Mr. Ruskin has had 
so much credit, but which was, years before, enunciated 
by Augustus Welby Pugin, "that nothing should be con- 
structed for ornament, but that all construction should be 
useful first, and secondarily made the vehicle for orna- 
ment," is thoroughly embodied in " pointed " architecture 
alone. 

No doubt this rule was occasionally transgressed by 
mediaeval architects, as, e.g., by the designer of the west 
front of Wells cathedral ; but in Italian architecture it is 
persistently ignored. Thus the erection of flying but- 
tresses is almost a necessity where a massive stone roof is 
suspended at a great altitude over a spacious interior ; but 



238 Contemporary Evohttion. 

while such buttresses become, in the pointed style, objects 
of beauty no less than of utility, in the architecture of 
Italy they have no avowed place, and may be, as in 
S. Paul's cathedral, concealed by an elaborate screen of 
stone, which is doubly mendacious, since it denies the ex- 
istence of constructions which it exists only to hide, and 
at the same time tends to delude the observer as to the 
real height of the walls, the altitude of which it falsifies by 
exaggeration. In gothic architecture, wherever a door 
or a window is really wanted, there it is placed. It is not 
denied or disguised, but made manifest, and at the same 
time ornamental. 

It would be easy to adduce a multitude of examples, 
but these are sufficient to illustrate the principle which 
is here maintained ; namely, that a temple of the God 
who has given us our reason no less than our aesthetic 
instincts, and who is truth itself, should be both eminently 
" rational " and thoroughly " true." 

Recapitulating, then, our short examination of the fit- 
ness for church architecture of the two styles, gothic and 
Italian, it seems that neither one nor the other can be 
deemed free from very serious objections. 

But is there no alternative ? Are we externally to os- 
cillate from gothic to Italian, and from Italian to gothic ? 
Has the Church come to the end of her architectural 
powers of expression after passing from the catacombs 
through the basilica to the pointed minster, and back to 



Esthetic Evolution. 239 

the classical revival of Italy ? Believing, as has been as- 
serted in this essay, that the Church's splendour in the 
thirteenth century was but a faint adumbration of the 
august future reserved for her even in this world, and while 
still only the Church militant, it is probable that architec- 
turally, no less than in other respects, what is yet to be 
will be far more glorious than anything which yet has 
been. 

Readers may well ask whether there are any grounds for 
this prediction, — whether the invention of a new style is to 
be expected. Certainly no style was ever formed, nor, is it 
probable that one will ever be formed, otherwise than by 
gradual growth. Yet there does seem to be evidence of the 
possibility of such future growth. A zealous Italian may 
say, "You have objected to extreme gothicism as opposing 
a Church of the past to the Church of to-day, and as blaming 
its action in the post-mediaeval period ; but you yourself 
implicitly blame that period when you abuse the mendacity 
and other failings of the architecture which during that 
period it formed. This criticism would, however, be very 
erroneous. We do not blame the course pursued in adopt- 
ing and developing the Renaissance ; on the contrary, we 
believe it to have been the only wise and proper action 
then possible. But it is one thing to say that an action 
was, under given circumstances, the relatively best, and 
quite another to say that such action would be, under 
all circumstances, the absolutely best. 



240 Conte7nporary Evolution. 

If what is here advocated should find favour, it would 
none the less have been impossible at the period referred 
to. The Renaissance and subsequent architecture was a 
necessary transitional step ; the return to pagan models 
was, probably, the only mode possible for progress, even if 
that progress should hereafter take the course here sug- 
gested. " Reader pour mieux sauter " will then be found 
to have been the real signification of the retrogression, 
although, of course, the actual enthusiasts for classical 
revivals were not conscious of the future which they were, 
in fact, but beginning to prepare. 

We would urge then, that while full of veneration for 
every manifestation of the Church, while reverencing its 
outward expression from the first to the nineteenth cen- 
turies, we should carefully keep ourselves clear from all 
exclusive attachment to any one of those passing modes 
— whether basilican, gothic, Italian, or what not — in which 
its spirit found material expression, In the words of the 
first writer here referred to,* we should be careful not "to 
adore the works themselves instead of the God who in- 
spired them, ,, or "to worship the mere garments in which 
the Church has decked herself." The view taken by 
fanatical admirers of " Christian " (i. e., pointed) architec- 
ture is very different from that taken by the mediaeval 
builders themselves, who actually fancied that they were 

* Loc. cit.j p. 449. 



^Esthetic Evolution. 241 

continuing true classical architecture, just as the German 
kaisers were, in their eyes, real successors of Caesar and 
the Antonines. 

It is time now to explain exactly where the development 
is to be looked for of a new style of architecture combining 
the advantages and avoiding the defects of both the Italian 
and the gothic styles. As was said at starting, the pointed 
arch is the one dominant feature of gothic architecture, and 
it is so with good reason, if, as we believe, the whole mode 
of architectural development in the thirteenth, fourteenth, 
and fifteenth centuries was due to the introduction of the 
pointed arch in the twelfth. That element, once intro- 
duced, gave as it were a certain twist to architecture, 
which, once having got into the pointed groove, ran its 
natural course and worked itself thoroughly out. Having 
reached its last stage, no richness of detail in panelled 
wall or fantraceried vault could compensate for the weari- 
ness produced by endless mechanical repetition, where the 
same ornamental features were reproduced on all sides, 
so as to suggest their being carried down to microscopic 
dimensions. Great indeed must have been the feeling of 
relief afforded by the change to a revived classicism. We 
may speculate as to the possibilities of architectural 
development had no classical Renaissance taken place, 
and there are facts enough to make us rejoice over that 
Renaissance, as at least a relative blessing, compared with 
what might otherwise have been in store for us. 



242 Contemporary Evolution. 

When we consider the wonderful pulpits of Belgium 
— with their apes and parrots — and certain late churches, 
where the pillars expand above into realistic reproduc- 
tions of palm-trees, the possibility suggests itself that, 
but for the classical revival, our churches might have 
assumed such a realistic botanical and zoological de- 
velopment as to have become like immense structures 
of Dresden china transformed into stone, its pillars stone 
trees, its window-tracery a collection of petrified creepers, 
its niches grottos, and its altars rocks ! 

If, however, nothing further is to be hoped from 
gothic, and if we can nevertheless only hope for some- 
thing new by a more or less continuous development 
from something old, what is to be our starting point ? 
As has been said, gothic architecture is essentially 
pointed, and its raison d'etre is the pointed arch. To 
obtain a new starting-point, continuous with preceding 
structures, we must then revert to architecture as it 
existed before, or independently of, the introduction 
of the pointed arch. Now, of such architecture we 
fortunately have abundant examples in Germany, where 
the pointed arch appeared late, was for a long time 
sparingly adopted, the pre-existing round-arched or 
Romanesque style persisting. 

We have in the cathedral of Speyer a magnificent 
example of this style in its earlier condition, that of 
excessive strength and stability ; but from this early 



^Esthetic Evolution. 243 

Romanesque a lighter round-arched style became de- 
veloped, embodying the true principles of construction 
and much of the picturesqueness of gothic, while free 
from the special peculiarity of pointed arches and 
details. There is much reason to believe that if the 
pointed arch had not made its appearance in Ger- 
many at all, a style would have been ultimately de- 
veloped at least as perfect as the true gothic sub- 
sequently became. But this development was nipped in 
the bud by the introduction, first of the pointed arch, 
and then of true French gothic, like that of Cologne 
cathedral. 

It is here contended that we must have recourse to the 
Romanesque, not for adoption and imitation, but as a 
starting-point whence to develop an architecture at once 
rational and beautiful, embodying all the truest and best 
principles of construction and ornamentation, and profit- 
ing by and learning from both pointed architecture and 
from all that was admirable in the Renaissance of Italy. 
It is not meant that we are to become architectural 
eclectics, and cull a feature here from the gothic, there 
from the Renaissance — a window from Lincoln, an arch 
from Italy, etc. It is meant that the architect should 
endeavour to improve upon the Romanesque by a mind 
imbued with all that is best, both in the spirit of true 
gothic and of the Renaissance. In this way I believe 
it possible that a style of church -building may be 



244 Contemporary Evolution. 

evolved which shall satisfy all the requirements drawn 
out in the earlier part of this chapter. This we will 
endeavour shortly to show ; but first it may be useful 
to notice some of the old more or less perfectly Roman- 
esque churches, which may serve, not as models, but as 
objects of study, full of fruitful suggestions. 

Foremost amongst these may perhaps be cited S. 
Cunibert's at Cologne, which, although finished in the 
same year in which the cathedral was begun, neverthe- 
less exhibits the pointed arch only here and there. It 
consists of a nave and aisles with clerestory, an apsidal 
choir, having on each side a tower. At the west end 
is a lofty transept, somewhat as in our old college 
chapels, as e.g., at Magdalen College, Oxford. 

Again, the Apostles* Church, with its three apsides, 
and that of S. Martin's, with its short sanctuary, so 
suitable for modern worship, as well as the grand old 
church ^of Andernach and the Abbey of Maria Laach, 
should be carefully studied. The lovely fragment still 
left of the abbey church of Heisterbach may be re- 
ferred to as an example of the lightness and elegance 
attained to in the transition period, as the cathedral 
of Maintz, and that, before referred to, of Speyer, may 
be quoted as examples of the majestic solidity of the 
earlier Romanesque. 

S. Gereon's church at Cologne shows how fine an 
effect might be produced by the addition of the dome 



Aisthetic Evolution. 245 

to Romanesque architecture ; while the peculiar semi- 
circular windows of St. Cunibert's, as also of the nave 
of the minster at Bonn, suggest the employment of 
windows at once ornamental and light-giving, yet not 
absorbing too much space. 

The cathedral of Durham and the city of Shrews- 
bury show us how light and beautiful a development 
the round arch sometimes attained even in England ; 
but it is in Germany that by far the richest collection 
will be found of round-arched buildings calculated to 
suggest treatment and features suitable for modern 
round-arched buildings constructed on the principles, 
though not in the configuration, of mediaeval, pointed 
architecture.* 

It is much to be regretted that so many of our 
architects have been so tied down and cramped by the 
narrow taste of their public for " middle-pointed " archi- 
tecture with abundant floral ornamentation. We know 
more than one who groans over the apparent impossi- 
bility of introducing a taste for grand and solid buildings 
of real majesty, instead of the "pretty" and petty beau- 
ties so generally in vogue. Those readers interested in 

* Many of these German churches have an apse at each end. It 
appears to me that this feature might be very usefully adopted with 
a slight modification, the western apse serving as a baptistery. As 
we are " buried with Christ in baptism," a representation of the en- 
tombment might be appropriately placed in a small crypt beneath 
the font in such western baptismal apse. 



246 Contemporary Evolution. 

some parish church about to be built may profitably 
make a pilgrimage to S. Columba's, Shoreditch, and 
imagine the excellent effect of similar buildings, the 
designer being invited to discard in them the pointed 
arch except where solidity or convenience of construction 
might require it. 

Let us now review the style of church architecture 
here suggested as regards the fourteen requirements 
enumerated in the earlier part of this communication. 
In the first place, as it adopts its principles of construc- 
tion and ornamentation mainly from mediaeval architec- 
ture, it can claim a share in the holy memories con- 
nected with the latter, while, in its repudiation of the 
narrowness of gothic, it is in harmony with the spirit 
of St. Philip and the saintly men of the post-Tridentine 
period. 

The same considerations show that it fulfils the second 
requirement, that, namely, of having been " originated 
through Christian influences. ,, The third requirement, 
" that it should be widely acceptable," is one which it is 
already well on the way to fulfil. In France, in Bel- 
gium, in Germany, and even in England, symptoms of 
a spontaneous and apparently unconscious development 
in this direction are already to be met with. 

The next requirement, "that it should be capable of 
adaptation to all needs," is of the very essence of its 
principles, which are those of mediaeval architecture, it 



Alsthetic Involution. 247 

not being in the least tied down to the formality and 
symmetry of the Italian style. 

" That it should not be anti-Roman " is also of its 
essence, since it will arise in part from an objection to 
gothic as being to a certain degree open to that re- 
proach, and since it will freely adopt all the best features 
of the Italian style. 

" That it should be exactly fitted to our existing 
modes of worship " will also necessarily follow, since it 
will be developed with the express purpose of providing 
in the best manner possible to harmonise with and sub- 
serve the ritual of the period of its birth. The seventh 
requirement, "that there should not be too many 
columns," also follows, since it is free to adopt in this 
respect whatever features in whatever preceding style 
may be deemed most desirable. The eighth require- 
ment, that respecting the due admission of " light," is 
one in which it will present numerous important advan- 
tages over every preceding style. 

In the first place, the absence of any rigid rule of 
symmetry will allow the admission of light just when- 
ever it may be required. Secondly, the windows may 
be of any shape found the most convenient, — square, 
elongated, and narrow windows, rose-windows or semi- 
circular windows, as in the nave of Bonn cathedral. 
They may also be made ornamental by mullions, while 
tracery need not by any means be confined to the upper 



248 Contemporary Evolution. 

part of each window, since each window may be all 
tracery, the stonework being of such thickness as may 
combine strength and security with a copious admission 
of light. The absence of that beautiful but self-contra- 
dictory feature, brilliant stained glass, will allow an ample 
supply of light without too great a sacrifice of wall- 
space, and without any impairment of stability. Not that 
the glazing should not be ornamental and artistic ; the 
pieces of glass might be so designed that their lead 
framework may form elegant patterns,* while the glass 
itself, of delicate greys and half-tints, will afford a wide 
scope for the skilful designer. The nature and arrange- 
ment of the windows will especially facilitate the eleventh 
requirement — that as to paintings, — since the neutral- 
tinted glass will be highly favourable, while the non- 
obstruction offered by it to the entrance of light will 
by rendering less numerous or less large windows neces- 
sary, increase the amount of available wall-space. 

The preceding requirement that each church should 
" manifest one predominant idea, and exhibit an impres- 
sive unity," can as well be met by the developed Roman- 
esque as by Italian architecture. That noble and 



* A precedent for this is to be found in the abbey of Pontigny. 
This abbey was built in the early days of the Cistercian reform, and 
the luxury of stained glass having been forbidden, an ornamental 
arrangement of colourless glass by means of the leading became 
the only adornment. 



^Esthetic Evolittion. 249 

especially unity-giving structure " the dome " will find 
its place therein ; and there is no noble feature of the 
Italian style that may not be freely adopted in the style 
I venture to advocate. At the same time, the absence 
of any rigid canons as to symmetry will allow the free 
development of all such subordinate features or later 
added additions in each building as original or subsequent 
needs may require, and thus an element of complexity, 
surprise, and mystery may be annexed, in a secondary 
manner, to the predominant and primary unity of the 
whole. 

It is hardly necessary to add that the modern use of 
holy images will here meet with facilities fully as great 
as in Italian architecture, and a different degree of pro- 
minence, importance, or majesty, can readily be given to 
each separate image. 

Finally, that requirement as to church architecture 
which has been here added to those of H. W. B. and -his 
opponent, namely, rationality of construction, will find 
itself pre-eminently met in the architecture here advo- 
cated. It will be so that because the adaptation of all 
the true principles of mediaeval architecture is one of the 
primary conditions supposed and laid down for its de- 
velopment, while whatever is noble and striking in post- 
mediaeval architecture may be freely adopted ; neverthe- 
less, its various objectionable features will be as studiously 
eschewed. 



250 Contemporary , Evolution. 

Thus a concordat may be established between those 
rival parties the " Goths " and the " Italians/' and we shall 
cease to be " cabined, cribbed, confined " within the narrow 
limits of the last six centuries. 

If we are right in believing that the Church will, even 
in this world, attain a majesty and glory such as was but 
poorly shadowed forth by its mediaeval beauty, it is surely 
reasonable also to believe that the artistic expression of 
its spirit has as yet by no means fully blossomed forth, 
and' an undue exaltation of the post-mediaeval art of 
Italy is surely to be deprecated as strongly as are the 
exaggerated claims made by some for the style which 
preceded it. 

Should it one day, by God's permission, whether by 
war, by natural convulsion, or the violence of demagogic 
passion, be demolished, there is no need to doubt but 
that afterwards another S. Peter's would arise as much 
excelling in majesty and beauty the S. Peter's we see 
to-day as the S. Peter's of to-day excels the ancient and 
venerable basilica of Constantine which preceded it. 

H. W. B.'s opponent himself makes * the following 
remark : " That different ideas of the human mind are 
expressed by different styles of architecture will hardly 
be denied by any who have thought upon the subject. 
If this be granted, then it is difficult to see how any 

* Loc. cit., p. 107. 



Esthetic Evolution. 



2SI 



one style of architecture can be upheld to the exclusion of 
all others/' This seems to be in one sense true, and in 
another sense false. That any one style of architecture 
is suitable for all times and all places is manifestly 
absurd ; but nevertheless, we may surely maintain that 
only one style can be really suitable for a definite purpose 
at any special locality at any given period. 

If it is true, as the writer just quoted says, that " differ- 
ent ideas " are expressed by " different styles," we hold 
it to be also true that one definite and clear idea can 
have but one distinct and articulate architectural expres- 
sion. We also believe that every church built should be 
the expression and embodiment of its religious object as 
conceived at the period of its erection in the locality in 
which it is placed. 

While this rule is by no means a narrow one, but 
freely allows that various and diverse buildings {e.g., 
Amiens, or the Certosa of Pavia, or the Gesu) may cor- 
rectly embody the diverse ideas of their designers, it is 
decisive against the fitness of either gothic or Italian 
for the religious architecture of the future in England. 
That which correctly embodied conceptions of the thir- 
teenth century, or the Italian climate, cannot also be the 
correct embodiment of an English devotional idea of the 
nineteenth century, except such idea is of the essential 
identity of the Church of to-day with that of the Middle 
Ages. As such an idea of continuity has largely occupied 



252 Contemporary Evolution. 

the minds of English Catholics since Catholic emancipa- 
tion, it has been nationally and fittingly expressed by the 
architecture we have in the main hitherto adopted. What 
could be more satisfying to the mind of an English 
Catholic at the end of three centuries of persecution than 
to see rising on every side church and chapel, convent 
and cloister, the very same with those of which their 
forefathers had been formerly deprived ! What a poem 
can be read in the stones of S. Augustine's, Ramsgate ! 
How complete is the resuscitation presented to us by the 
Black Friars of Woodchester ! For some time to come 
gothic architecture will still be fitly used, and surely 
it might be well that the metropolitan church of West- 
minster should visibly and tangibly declare the spiritual 
authority ruling in it to be the legitimate successor and 
representative of the extinct primacy of the abolished 
province of Canterbury. 

That providential action which favoured the classical 
Renaissance, and which did away with the narrowness 
of pointed architecture has no less presided over the 
great mediaeval revival which has spread so widely over 
the earth with such happy results. But in the nature of 
things such an architectural protest cannot be continual. 
The continuity and unity of the Church of the nineteenth 
century with that of the thirteenth having been by the 
recent happy revival once for all architecturally demon- 
strated, the devotional idea will surely cease to be occu- 



Aisthetic Evolution. 



•D3 



pied therewith, and will address itself to the direct object 
of the buildings it erects without an eternal retrospect on 
any particular period. Such ideas will not improbably 
find their architectural embodiments in some such de- 
velopment as that here advocated. Therein and thereby 
all wants and aspirations will find their satisfaction ; and 
while the actions of the Church in this matter in different 
preceding epochs will all alike be justified, we shall none 
the less be encouraged to look forward to other develop- 
ments and greater glories of religious art than any re- 
vealed to us in the course of the centuries which are gone. 
Nullum, ternpus occurrit ecclesice ! The ever fruitful mother 
of beauty and of truth, of holy aspirations and of good 
works, has not come to the end of her evolution even in 
the world of art, and one mode has been here indicated 
in which that evolution may be advantageously worked 
out. 

Recurring to what has been said as to the other arts 
besides architecture, it may, then, in conclusion, be affirmed 
that there appear to be grounds for thinking that in 
the whole field of art, music, painting, sculpture, and 
architecture, our successors may witness a vast, new, com- 
plex, and stable artistic integration of a special and dis- 
tinctly Christian character — a self-consciousness, as it 
were, in Christian art such as never was before, and which 
will appropriately serve to externally clothe and embody 
that vast and magnificent Christian development for which 



'54 



Contemporary Evolution, 



the modern phases of political, scientific, and philosophic 
evolution are, if the views here put forward are just and 
true, surely preparing the way at a future period ; to which 
Christians may look forward with joy and hope, but with- 
out a shadow of impatience, being abundantly thankful 
if the providence of God graciously grants them the 
opportunity of helping forward in their own day, in how- 
ever insignificant a degree, that great scheme, which, as 
all theists are rationally compelled to allow, is the one 
supreme end of the whole evolutionary process, so far as 
the great Author of nature has revealed His purposes to 
our eyes, not merely by supernatural revelation, but also 
by that great natural revelation which the universe, as 
manifested in mind as well as in matter, displays to the 
eyes of every one who duly ponders without prejudice 
over the lessons it conveys. 




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